Turki Mash Awi Zayid Al Asiri

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Turki Mash Awi Zayid Al Asiri is a citizen of Saudi Arabia, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.^[1] His detainee ID number is 185. The Department of Defense reports that Al Asiri was born on March 8, 1975, in Yaboq, Saudi Arabia.

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

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 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 Tribunal. 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.

To comply with a Freedom of Information Act request, during the winter and spring of 2005, the Department of Defense released 507 memoranda. Those 507 memoranda each contained the allegations against a single detainee, prepared for their Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The detainee's name and ID numbers were redacted from all but one of the memoranda. However 169 of the memoranda had the detainee's ID hand-written on the top right hand of the first page corner. When the Department of Defense complied with a court order, and released official lists of the detainee's names and ID numbers it was possible to identify who those 169 were written about. Turki Mash Awi Zayid Al Asiri was one of those 169 detainees.^[2]

[edit] Allegations

a. The detainee is associated with al Qaida or Taliban forces:

The detainee is ###### ####### ####### who volunteered to travel to Afghanistan via a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Karachi, Pakistan; to Hyderabad, Pakistan; to Safa, Pakistan; to Baker, Pakistan, and finally to a guesthouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan prior to 11 September 2001.
The detainee trained at the al Farouq camp for about one month.
The detainee received physical exercise and weapons training while at the al Farouq camp.
The detainee was in Jalalabad, Afghanistan on 11 September 2001 when the attacks occurred in the United States.
The detainee stated that due to the bombing by the United States, he and others retreated from Jalalabad, Afghanistan to the mountains, approximately three weeks after the 11 September 2001 attacks.
The detainee stated he traveled throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan for approximately six or seven months prior to his capture by Pakistani forces in December 2001.
An alias that may be associated with this detainee was listed on a document recovered during raids against al Qaida associates.