Amin Ullah

Amin Ullah is a citizen of Afghanistan, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. [http://www.dod.mil/news/May2006/d20060515%20List.pdf list of prisoners (.pdf)] , "US Department of Defense", May 15 2006] His detainee ID number is 848.American intelligence analysts estimate that he was born in 1956, in Chogha, Afghanistan.

Combatant Status Review Tribunal

] Three chairs were reserved for members of the press, but only 37 of the 574 Tribunals were observed.cite web
url=http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=3902
title=Annual Administrative Review Boards for Enemy Combatants Held at Guantanamo Attributable to Senior Defense Officials
publisher=United States Department of Defense
date=March 6 date=December 2007

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 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.

Aminullah chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal. [http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt/Set_34_2426-2457.pdf#12 Summarized transcripts (.pdf)] , from Amin Ullah's "Combatant Status Review Tribunal" - pages 12-16]

Allegations

The allegations against the detainees were read out, and recorded, in most of the transcripts. They weren't recorded in Aminullah's transcript.

tatement

Aminullah told his Tribunal that he had served as a soldier for an Afghan leader he called President Dahoud.
Mohammed Daoud Khan was the only President of the First Afghan Republic, from 1973-1978.

Aminullah told his Tribunal that the Taliban killed his brother, when they came to conscript him into their forces, threw him into jail, when he refused. He said his family found his body forty days after the Taliban conscripted him.Aminullah said that sometime later the Taliban came to conscript him, put him in jail, when he refused, and that while in prison he decided to comply. He was assigned to lead a squad of ten men. But he broke the rules, and would return to his family at night. The Taliban caught him, and punished him with imprisonment again.

He was leading his squad of ten when he heard on the radio of the American invasion. So he led his squad of ten to desert, and returned to Konduz, the area where they were all from, which had not yet been liberated from the Taliban. Aminullah fought against the Taliban in the liberation of Konduz, Mazar sic and Khanabad sic. After the capture of Khanabad the Northern Alliance demobilized him. He returned to his home, and when the last elements of the Taliban had been mopped up, four or five months later, he turned in his weapon, and those of the ten men he led to a Sergeant Abdul Basir of the new Karzai government.

Afghan forces arrested him a year later. Aminullah said all the allegations against him were untrue.

Aminullah said that he like the new government, and he has welcomed the American help. He liked that his children were able to go to school.

Testimony in response to Tribunal officers' questions

*Aminullah clarified that the first time he was imprisoned by the Taliban he was a soldier for Rabani, who was the official President of the rump of Afghanistan during the civil war that followed the ouster of the Communists, prior to the takeover of the Taliban.
*Aminullah confirmed Sergeant Basir gave him a receipt for the weapons he turned in.

Witness and evidence requests

When Aminullah was asked if he had any more evidence to present he reminded his Tribunal that he had requested two witnesses, he had provided their addresses, and he had requested the Tribunal send for the receipt for the weapons he turned in.

References

External links

*cite news
url=http://detainees.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/69
title=Guantanamo Inmate Database: Aminullah
publisher=Miami Herald
author=Tom Lasseter
date=June 15 2008
accessdate=2008-06-16
quote=