Abdu Ali al Haji Sharqawi

Al Hajj Abdu Ali Sharqawi
Born	(1974-05-26) 26 May 1974 Ta'izz, Yemen
Arrested	February 2002 Karachi, Pakistan
Citizenship	Yemen
Detained at	CIA's black sites Guantanamo
Alternate name	Riyadh the facilitator
ISN	1457
Status	Still held in Guantanamo

Al Hajj Abdu Ali Sharqawi is a citizen of Yemen held in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. The Department of Defense reports that he was born on 26 May 1974, in Ta'izz, Yemen.

As of June 4, 2011, Abdu Ali al Haji Sharqawi has been held at Guantanamo for six years nine months.

Transportation to Guantanamo Bay

Human Rights group Reprieve reports that flight records show two captives named Al-Sharqawi and Hassan bin Attash were flown from Kabul in September 2002. The two men were flown aboard N379P, a plane suspected to be part of the CIA's ghost fleet. Flight records showed that the plane originally departed from Diego Garcia, stopped in Morocco, Portugal, then Kabul before landing in Guantanamo Bay.

The Guardian reports that one of the two men has been released from US custody.

A differing report shows Sharqawi was arrested by the CIA in Karachi, Pakistan, in February 2002, and rendered to Jordan. He was transferred to Afghanistan in January 2004, where he was held at the CIA-run Dark Prison, then at Bagram Air Base, and then finally transferred to Guantanamo in September 2004.

Extraordinary rendition

Al Haji Abdu Ali Sharqawi has written that after his capture, in February 2002, in Pakistan he spent two years in CIA custody in foreign interrogation centres, prior to his transfer to Guantanamo, in February 2004: He writes that he spent 19 months in Amman, Jordan, and then five months in a secret interrogation centre. While in Jordan he had been handed over to the custody of Jordan's General Intelligence Department. He wrote:

• "I was kidnapped, not knowing anything of my fate, with continuous torture and interrogation for the whole of two years. When I told them the truth, I was tortured and beaten.
• "I was told that if I wanted to leave with permanent disability both mental and physical, that that could be arranged. They said they had all the facilities of Jordan to achieve that. I was told that I had to talk, I had to tell them everything."

Habeas Corpus

In June 2011 a federal Judge ruled that the Obama administration can not use certain statements Sharqawi gave to justify his detention because the government did not rebut claims of torture in Jordan and Afghanistan. But the same judge rejected a defense attempt to suppress an incriminating statement Sharqawi made before his claims of torture.

Joint Review Task Force

When he assumed office in January 2009 President Barack Obama made a number of promises about the future of Guantanamo. He promised the use of torture would cease at the camp. He promised to institute a new review system. That new review system was composed of officials from six departments, where the OARDEC reviews were conducted entirely by the Department of Defense. When it reported back, a year later, the Joint Review Task Force classified some individuals as too dangerous to be transferred from Guantanamo, even though there was no evidence to justify laying charges against them. On April 9, 2013, that document was made public after a Freedom of Information Act request. Sharqawi Abdu All Al Hajj was one of the 71 individuals deemed too innocent to charge, but too dangerous to release. Although Obama promised that those deemed too innocent to charge, but too dangerous to release would start to receive reviews from a Periodic Review Board less than a quarter of men have received a review.

External links

• Judge Rules Yemeni’s Detention at Guantánamo Based Solely on Torture Andy Worthington
• Human Rights Watch, Double Jeopardy: CIA Renditions to Jordan (2008)
• UN Secret Detention Report (Part Three): Proxy Detention, Other Countries’ Complicity, and Obama’s Record Andy Worthington
• Gitmo Detainee Seals Up Torture Confessions June 8, 2011