Yasser Talal Al Zahrani
Encyclopedia
Yasser Talal al Zahrani (September 22, 1984 – June 10, 2006) was a citizen of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...

 who was held in extrajudicial detention
Extrajudicial detention
Arbitrary or extrajudicial detention is the detention of individuals by a state, without ever laying formal charges against them.Although it has a long history of legitimate use in wartime , detention without charge, sometimes in secret, has been one of the hallmarks of totalitarian states...

 in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 Guantanamo Bay detainment camp
Guantanamo Bay detainment camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a detainment and interrogation facility of the United States located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The facility was established in 2002 by the Bush Administration to hold detainees from the war in Afghanistan and later Iraq...

s, in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

.
His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 93.
The Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...

 (DoD) reported that he was born on September 22, 1984, in Yenbo, Saudi Arabia.

Captured at the age of 16, al-Zahrani was accused of being "a front line fighter for the Taliban", despite later revisions that stated he had never advanced past the "second line". He was also accused of arranging weapons purchases.

In 2006, he wrote a letter to his father while in detention, that suggested that two prisoners seemed to be on the verge of death, and that he suspected foul play. Ten days later, he and the two prisoners were all reported dead, ostensibly having hanged themselves with their bedsheets.

Death

On June 10, 2006 the DoD reported that three Guantanamo detainees, two Saudis, and one Yemeni committed suicide. DoD spokesmen refrained from releasing the dead men's identities.

On June 11, 2006 Saudi authorities released the names of the two Saudi men.
One was identified as Al Zahrani.

The other Saudi was identified as both Maniy bin Shaman al-Otaibi and Mani bin Shaman bin Turki al Habradi.
Neither of these names is on either of the two official lists of Guantanamo names the DoD has released.

In February 2009 Staff Sergeant Joe Hickman, a U.S. Army Non Commissioned Officer stationed in Guantanamo Bay, and on duty 9 June 2006, Reported to the Justice Department that he did not think the deaths were suicides from what he and other soldiers had witnessed.

On 18 January 2010, Scott Horton of Harper’s Magazine published a story denouncing al-Salami's, Al-Utaybi' and Al-Zahrani's deaths as accidental manslaughter during a torture session, and the official account as a cover-up.
A report, Death in Camp Delta, was published by the Center for Policy & Research of Seton Hall University School of Law
Seton Hall University School of Law
The Seton Hall University School of Law is part of Seton Hall University, and is located in downtown Newark, New Jersey. Seton Hall Law School is the only private law school in New Jersey, and is the top-ranked of the three law schools in the state...

, under the supervision of its director, Professor Mark Denbeaux
Mark Denbeaux
Mark P. Denbeaux is a law professor at Seton Hall University School of Law, Director of the Center for Policy and Research at Seton Hall Law School, author of a standard law text, and practicing attorney of counsel in the family law firm of Denbeaux & Denbeaux.Denbeaux served as senior attorney in...

, denouncing numerous inconsistencies in the official accounts of these deaths.

Combatant Status Review

A Summary of Evidence memo
Summary of Evidence (CSRT)
Counter-terrorism analysts prepared a Summary of Evidence memo for the Combatant Status Review Tribunals of the 558 captives who remained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba in the fall of 2004.-The 2005 release:...

 was prepared for the tribunal. His memo accused him of the following:
  • That he had arrived in Afghanistan in July 2001.
  • That he had trained at an Afghan training camp
    Afghan training camp
    An Afghan training camp is a camp or facility used for militant training located in pre-2002 Afghanistan. At the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Indian intelligence officials estimated that there were over 120 training camps operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, run by a variety of...

    , near Konduz
  • That he had served on the second line, near Konduz, in the second week of September 2001.

Allegations

There is no record that Yasser Talal Al Zahrani chose to attend his hearing. The Summary of Evidence memo
Summary of Evidence (ARB)
Counter-terrorism analysts prepared a Summary of Evidence memo for the Administrative Review Board hearings of approximately 460 captives in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba from December 2004 to December 2005.-Release of the memos:...

 prepared for his hearing listed 26 factors favoring his continued detention.

The factors stated:
  • That he decided to travel to Afghanistan, instead of finishing high school, in August 2001.
  • That he trained at the Taliban's Konduz Center, and at al Qaida's al Farouq training camp
    Al Farouq training camp
    The Al Farouq training camp, also known as "the airport camp", was an alleged Al-Qaeda training camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan. Camp attendees received small-arms training, map-reading, orientation, explosives training, and other training....

    .
  • That he was a financial courier.
  • That he had ties to various senior al Qaida and Taliban leaders.
  • That he served as security guard for three months
  • That he was captured, and sent to a prison in Mazari Sharif, and was injured during the prison riot at Qali Jangi in early November.

Al Zahrani's age

Bahrain
Bahrain
' , officially the Kingdom of Bahrain , is a small island state near the western shores of the Persian Gulf. It is ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. The population in 2010 stood at 1,214,705, including 235,108 non-nationals. Formerly an emirate, Bahrain was declared a kingdom in 2002.Bahrain is...

i detainee Abdulla Majid Al Naimi
Abdulla Majid Al Naimi
Born on March 9, 1982, in Manama, Bahrain, Abdulla Majid Al Naimi is a Bahraini, formerly held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba....

 who was released on November 8, 2005 said he knew the three dead men, and commented on their deaths on June 25, 2006.

Al Naimi said that
Al Zahrani, was only 16 when he was captured.
According to Al Naimi Al Zahrani should have been treated as a minor.
"He was 21 when he died, barely the legal age in most countries, and was merely 16 when he was picked up four and half years ago. His age shows that he is not even supposed to be taken to a police office; he should have been turned over to the underage [juvenile] authorities."

Recent letter to his father

The New York Times reported that Al Zahrani's father, Talal Abdallah al-Zahrani, recently received a letter from his son where he seemed to be in good spirits.
He said: "Nothing suggested that he would commit suicide, nothing,"

Al Zahrani disputed the US report that his son was non-compliant, saying his son had spent his time memorizing the Koran, and had been behaving.
Al Zahrani said that the reason his son had been in the area of Afghanistan was that he had been working for Islamic charities.

Letter of June 1

The English language Arab newspaper Asharq Alawsat
Asharq Alawsat
Asharq Al-Awsat is an Arabic international newspaper headquartered in London. A pioneer of the "off-shore" model in the Arabic press, the paper is often noted for its distinctive green-tinted pages....

reported that a letter a detainee had "...written ten days before the Pentagon announced three inmates had committed suicide on 10 June ..." appears to report that “...Two detainees are on the verge of death… perhaps they are dying or have died poisoned....”
Asharq Alawsat asserts that the two detainees on the verge of death were two of the men the USA claimed committed suicide.

Asharq Alawsat reports that the letter was handed by the detainee, to his lawyer, who turned it over to Talal Al Zahrani's father's lawyer.
Asharq Alawsat reports that the detainee's name is being kept confidential, for his safety.

Guantanamo attorneys must all agree that they must turn over all their notes and other documents before they leave Guantanamo. They have to report to a secure document center in Washington DC center in order to review their own notes. If a detainee authored a letter suggesting Talal Al-Zahrani and the two other men didn't really commit suicide, keeping his identity confidential could not have prevented the DoD from learning his identity.

Post mortems

Guantanamo camp authorities conducted post mortems on the three dead men, before their bodies were shipped home.
Al Zahrani's father has called for a second post mortem by neutral, independent pathologists.

Al Zahrani's father claimed that after his own examination of his son's corpse he was convinced he bore the marks of a beating.
He sees this as confirming his skepticism that Al Zahrani did not commit suicide, but was murdered.

Al Utaybi's family reported that his Saudi post-mortem had found that the DoD had retained Al Utaybi's brain, heart, liver and kidneys.

Patrice Mangin
Patrice Mangin
- Professor Patrice Mangin is a widely published forensic pathologist. He has graduated from the Faculty of medicine Broussais-Hôtel-Dieu, University René Descartes Paris VI . He has obtained his M.D. thesis at Faculty of medicine, University Louis Pasteur - Strasbourg I and board certification in...

, a widely published forensic pathologist, headed the team that volunteered to provide neutral, independent second autopsies for the three dead men.
After their examination of Ahmed's body, he said that it was routine for pathologists to remove some organs that decay rapidly. However, they had also found that the DoD had retained Ahmed's throat, which his team would need to examine before they offered a definitive conclusion as to how he died.

Mangin asked the DoD to supply his team with Ahmed's throat, and with the bed sheets they claimed had been used to hang the three men.

Weight reports

The Center for the Study of Human Rights at the University of California (Davis) published the official record of Al Zahrani's weigh-in reports.

NCIS Report

On August 23, 2008 Josh White
Josh White (journalist)
Josh White is an American journalist.White writes for the Washington Post, but has been published in various publications, including the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian.He is also invited to serve as a commentator on Radio and Television....

 writing in the Washington Post reported
the paper had received 3,000 pages of documents arising from the NCIS investigation through Freedom of Information Act requests.
He reported that the NCIS report attributed the deaths to lapses on the part of the guards, and to a policy of leniency for the compliant captives.

The report said the deaths were in Camp 1, which has now been closed, a camp for compliant captives, and that the men's bodies were masked by laundry they were allowed to hang up to dry.

Outstanding habeas petition

Yassar Talal al-Zahrani and fellow Saudi Salah Addin Ali Ahmed Al-Salami had habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...

 petitions filed on their behalf, prior to their deaths.
In December 2009 the Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

 Presidency argued that the their petitions should be quashed, because their CSR Tribunals had determined that they were "enemy combatants".
Talal al-Zahrani's father countered: "It doesn't really matter if this was an intentional death or an accidental death or suicide. The point is that the U.S. government bears responsibility."

See also

  • Juveniles held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp
  • Salah Ali Abdullah Ahmed al-Salami
  • Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi
    Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi
    Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi was a citizen of Saudi Arabia, who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba...


External links

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