Musab Omar Ali Al Mudwani is a citizen of Yemen who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.[2]
Musab Omar Ali Al Mudwani | |
---|---|
Born | 1980 (age 43–44)[1] Al-Hudaydah, Yemen |
Arrested | 2002-09-11 Karachi Pakistani security officials, CIA |
Detained at | Dark prison, Guantanamo |
Other name(s) | Musab Omar Ali al Mudwani Musab Omarali al Mudwani |
ISN | 839 |
Status | Transferred to Oman on January 16, 2017 |
Joint Task Force Guantanamo analysts estimate Al Madoonee was born in 1980, Al-Hudaydah, Yemen.
The United States Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture listed Al Mudwani as one of the individual held in the CIA's secret network of black sites.[3] Musab Al Mudwani was apprehended by a combined force of Pakistani security officials and a CIA black site team, on September 11, 2002, the anniversary of al Qaeda's attack within the USA. He and five other individuals spent slightly more than a month in CIA custody at the salt pit, prior to being transferred to Guantanamo. Guantanamo analysts maintained the narrative that these six were an al Qaeda sleeper cell they called the "Karachi Six".[4][5][6] However, that claim had been dropped by his 2016 Periodic Review Board hearing. Mudwani was transferred to Oman on January 16, 2017.[7]
Originally, the Bush Presidency asserted that captives apprehended in the "war on terror" were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, and could be held indefinitely, without charge, and without an open and transparent review of the justifications for their detention.[8] In 2004, the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being informed of the allegations justifying their detention, and were entitled to try to refute them.
Following the Supreme Court's ruling the Department of Defense set up the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants.[8][11]
Scholars at the Brookings Institution, led by Benjamin Wittes, listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention was justified by certain common allegations:[12]
Al Mudwani had a writ of habeas corpus filed on his behalf.[13] Historian Andy Worthington reported that when his petition was finally considered in December 2009, it was turned down, even though he had been a "model prisoner".
Though the United States initially suspected that the six were involved with an al-Qaida cell plotting a future attack, the case has failed to get off the ground for 14 years for lack of evidence. As documented in the detainee's unclassified profile, U.S. has tempered its claims about the Karachi 6 in recent years, describing them now as low-level al-Qaida fighters.
The Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg, with the assistance of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at the Yale Law School, filed suit in federal court in Washington D.C., in March for the list under the Freedom of Information Act. The students, in collaboration with Washington attorney Jay Brown, represented Rosenberg in a lawsuit that specifically sought the names of the 46 surviving prisoners.
Critics called it an overdue acknowledgment that the so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals are unfairly geared toward labeling detainees the enemy, even when they pose little danger. Simply redoing the tribunals won't fix the problem, they said, because the system still allows coerced evidence and denies detainees legal representation.