Said Boujaadia

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Said Boujaadia is a citizen of Morocco held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.^[1] His Guantanamo detainee ID is 150. The Department of Defense reports that he was born on May 5, 1968, in Casablanca, Morocco.

1 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
- 1.1 Allegations
- 1.2 Testimony
2 References

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a small trailer, the same width, but shorter, than a mobile home. The Tribunal's President sat in the big chair. The detainee sat with their hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor in the white, plastic garden chair. A one way mirror behind the Tribunal President allowed observers to observe clandestinely. In theory the open sessions of the Tribunals were open to the press. Three chairs were reserved for them. In practice the Tribunal only intermittently told the press that Tribunals were being held. And when they did they kept the detainee's identities secret. In practice almost all Tribunals went unobserved.

Initially the Bush administration asserted that they could withhold all the protections of the Geneva Conventions to captives from the war on terror. This policy was challenged before the Judicial branch. Critics argued that the USA could not evade its obligation to conduct a competent tribunals to determine whether captives are, or are not, entitled to the protections of prisoner of war status.

Subsequently the Department of Defense instituted the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The Tribunals, however, were not authorized to determine whether the captives were lawful combatants -- rather they were merely empowered to make a recommendation as to whether the captive had previously been correctly determined to match the Bush administration's definition of an enemy combatant.

[edit] Allegations

During the winter and spring of 2005 the Department of Defense complied with a Freedom of Information Act request, and released five files that contained 507 memoranda which each summarized the allegations against a single detainee. These memos, entitled "Summary of Evidence" were prepared for the detainee's Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The detainee's names and ID numbers were redacted from all but one of these memos, when they were first released in 2005. But some of them contain notations in pen. Approximately four dozen of the memos have a notation specifying the detainee's ID number. One of the memos had a notation, in pen, specifying Boujaadia's detainee ID.^[2] The allegations he would have faced, during his Tribunal, were:

a. The detainee is a member of al Qaida:

The detainee traveled from Morocco to Kandahar, Afghanistan via Syria and Iran.
The detainee's travel to Afghanistan occurred late July 2001.
The detainee is associated with the al Wafa organization.
The al Wafa organization has been identified as a terrorist organization on the U.S. State Department's Terrorist Exclusion List.
The detainee is associated with individuals linked to the plot to attack United States warships in the straits of Gibraltar.
The detainee has familial ties to a senior al Qaida Lieutenant.
The detainee traveled with the wife of the chief of security for the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) has been identified as a terrorist organization on the U.S State Department's Terrorist Exclusion List.
A foreign government source has confirmed the detainee attended training camps.
The detainee trained at a terrorist training camp.

b. The detainee participated in military operations against the United States or it's [sic] coalition partners:

The detainee engaged in Jihad in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan.
The detainee was captured while attempting to cross into Pakistan from Afghanistan without identification documents.
The detainee was captured with one of Usama bin Ladin's [sic] drivers.