Mosa Zi Zemmori

Hafiz Mosa Zi Zemmori is a Belgian citizen who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.[1] His Guantanamo detainee ID number was 270. The Department of Defense reports that his date of birth is August 3, 1978, in Wilrijk, Belgium. He was repatriated to Belgium on April 25, 2005.[2] When he was arrested he was characterized as a Moroccan, or a Belgian, from Morocco, although the DoD says he was born in Belgium.[3][4][5]

Mosa Zi Zemmori
Born (1978-08-03) August 3, 1978
Wilrijk, Belgium
CitizenshipBelgian
Detained atGuantanamo
ISN270
Charge(s)No charge (held in extrajudicial detention)
Statusrepatriated

Life

Press reports routinely assert Zemmori was detained while in Kandahar, in the south of Afghanistan.[3][4][5] But the official DoD allegations against Zemmori acknowledge he was detained in Pakistan, after turning himself in to Pakistani officials.[6] Those documents say he was transferred to a detention facility in Kandahar.

Administrative Review Board

Detainees whose Combatant Status Review Tribunal labeled them "enemy combatants" were scheduled for annual Administrative Review Board hearings. These hearings were designed to assess the threat a detainee might pose if released or transferred, and whether there were other factors that warranted his continued detention.[7]

Repatriation

Zemmori was repatriated to Belgium on April 25, 2005 along with Mesut Sen. [2] Reuters reports he was held, for a time, by Belgian authorities.[5]

July 2015 arrest

Police in Belgium reported that in July 2015, five men were arrested accused of conspiracy in an armed robbery that was intended to raise funds to support recruitment of fighters in Syria, the five included Zemmori and a second former Guantanamo prisoner.[3][4][5] The arrests occurred on July 22, 2015, but were not reported in the English-speaking press until July 24. The Guardian and Reuters both described Zemmori as a "37-year-old Belgian of Moroccan origin". CNN described him as "a Moroccan national born in Antwerp.".

In May 2009, Zemmori and the other former Guantanamo prisoner were both cleared of the criminal conspiracy charges.[8]

Open letter to President Biden

On January 29, 2021 the New York Review of Books published an open letter from Zemmori, and six other individuals who were formerly held in Guantanamo, to newly inaugurated President Biden, appealing to him to close the detention camp.[9]

See also

References
  1. OARDEC. "List of Individuals Detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002 through May 15, 2006" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2007-09-30. Retrieved 2006-05-15. Works related to List of Individuals Detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002 through May 15, 2006 at Wikisource
  2. "Timeline: Guantanamo Bay prison". Al Jazeera. 2009-10-07. Archived from the original on 2011-12-30. Retrieved 2015-07-26. April 25: Mosa Zi Zemmori and Mesut Sen are repatriated to Belgium.
  3. "Two former Guantánamo inmates arrested in Belgium on terror charges". The Guardian. 2015-07-24. Retrieved 2015-07-26. Zemmouri, who was the only one of the five not arrested at the scene, was locked up in Guantánamo from 2001 to 2005 on suspicion of belonging to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), blamed for attacks in Casablanca and Madrid.
  4. Paul Cruikshank (2015-07-24). "Official: Two former Guantanamo detainees arrested in Belgium". CNN. Retrieved 2015-07-26. One of the former Guantanamo Bay detainees was Moussa Zemmouri, 37, a Moroccan national born in Antwerp, Belgian federal prosecutors announced Friday.
  5. Robin Emmott (2015-07-24). "Belgium arrests two ex-Guantanamo inmates on terrorism charges". Brussels: Reuters. Retrieved 2015-07-26. Zemmouri was captured in the Kandahar region in southern Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. He was flown back to Belgium in April 2005 and later released after spending time in a Belgian prison.
  6. Margot Williams (2008-11-03). "Guantanamo Docket: Mosa Zi Zemmori". New York Times. Retrieved 2015-07-26.
  7. "Annual Administrative Review Boards for Enemy Combatants Held at Guantanamo Attributable to Senior Defense Officials". March 6, 2007. Retrieved November 12, 2010.
  8. Worthington, Andy (September 3, 2011). "WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released After the Tribunals, 2004 to 2005 (Part Two of Five) section: Mosa Zi Zemmori (ISN 270, Belgium) Released April 2005". andyworthington.com. Retrieved 3 July 2017.
  9. Mansoor Adayfi; Moazzam Begg; Lakhdar Boumediane; Sami Al Hajj; Ahmed Errachidi; Mohammed Ould Slahi; Mosa Zi Zemmori (2021-01-29). "An Open Letter to President Biden About Guantánamo". New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on 2021-01-30. Retrieved 2021-01-30. At your inauguration, you told the world: “We will be judged, you and I, by how we resolve these cascading crises of our era. We will rise to the occasion.” It is therefore our suggestion that the following steps are taken to close Guantánamo
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