Salem Ahmed Hadi

Salem Ahmed Hadi is a citizen of Yemen, who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.[1] His detainee ID number is 131. Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts reports that Hadi was born on January 15, 1976, in Hadramaut, Yemen.

Salem Ahmed Hadi
Born(1976-01-15)January 15, 1976
Detained atGuantanamo
ISN131
Charge(s)no charge, held in extrajudicial detention
Statustransferred to Saudi Arabia on 2017-01-05
Children2 daughters

He was transferred to Saudi Arabia on January 5, 2017.[2][3] The transfer of Hadi, and more than a dozen other men, in the closing days of the Barack Obama Presidency was seen as marking a key disagreement between Obama and President-elect Donald Trump, who favored expanding the camp.[4][5][6]

Inconsistent identification

Salem was named inconsistently on the official lists:

  • He was named Salem Ahmed Ben Kend on the list of names released on April 20, 2006.[7]
  • He was named Salem Ahmed Hadi on the list of names released on May 15, 2006.[1]
  • He was named Salim Ahmed Haddi Hathramoot on his 2008 Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment.[8]

Official status reviews

Originally the Bush Presidency asserted that captives apprehended in the "war on terror" were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, and could be held indefinitely, without charge, and without an open and transparent review of the justifications for their detention.[9] In 2004 the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being informed of the allegations justifying their detention, and were entitled to try to refute them.

Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants
Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a 3x5 meter trailer where the captive sat with his hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor.[10][11]

Following the Supreme Court's ruling the Department of Defense set up the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants.[9][12]

Scholars at the Brookings Institution, lead by Benjamin Wittes, listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention was justified by certain common allegations:[13]

  • Salem Ahmed Ben Kend was listed as one of the captives who "The military alleges ... traveled to Afghanistan for jihad."[13]
  • Salem Ahmed Ben Kend was listed as one of the captives who "The military alleges ... took military or terrorist training in Afghanistan."[13]
  • Salem Ahmed Ben Kend was listed as one of the captives who "The military alleges ... fought for the Taliban."[13]
  • Salem Ahmed Ben Kend was listed as one of the captives whose "names or aliases were found on material seized in raids on Al Qaeda safehouses and facilities."[13]
  • Salem Ahmed Ben Kend was listed as one of the captives who "The military alleges that the following detainees were captured under circumstances that strongly suggest belligerency."[13]
  • Salem Ahmed Ben Kend was listed as one of the captives who was a foreign fighter.[13]
  • Salem Ahmed Ben Kend was listed as one of "36 [captives who] openly admit either membership or significant association with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or some other group the government considers militarily hostile to the United States."[13]
  • Salem Ahmed Ben Kend was listed as one of the captives who had admitted "fighting on behalf of Al Qaeda or the Taliban."[13]

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Salem Ahmed Ben Kend's Combatant Status Review Tribunal, on 7 October 2004.[14][15] The memo listed the following allegations against him:

Salem did not attend his 2005 Board hearing.[16] But a five-page summarized transcript recorded the discussion of his interview with his Assisting Military Officer.

Formerly secret Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment

On April 25, 2011, whistleblower organization WikiLeaks published formerly secret assessments drafted by Joint Task Force Guantanamo analysts.[17][18] His 9-page Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment was drafted on April 8, 2008.[8] It was signed by camp commandant Rear Admiral Mark H. Buzby. He recommended continued detention.

Joint Review Task Force

On January 20, 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama announced that he would try to empty the Guantanamo Bay Detention camps. He replaced the George W. Bush administration's annual OARDEC reviews, by military officers, reviews by high level officials from several government departments - the Joint Review Task Force, to be followed up by regular reviews by a Periodic Review Board.[5]

The Joint Review Task Force's conclusion was that Hadi was too dangerous to release.[4]

Periodic Review Board

A Periodic Review Board concluded, in May 2016, that Hadi could safely be transferred to another country.[5][4] This was the fifth time his status had been considered by the Board.[19]

Transfer to Saudi Arabia

Hadi, and three other individuals from Yemen, were transferred to Saudi Arabia on January 5, 2017 - in the closing weeks of Obama's second term.[3][4] The men were not transferred back to Yemen, their home, because officials judged Yemen too unstable.

The Nigerian Vanguard noted that the final push of the Obama Presidency was in conflict with the incoming administration of Donald Trump to retain all the individuals held in Guantanamo, and to fill it up with additional individuals.[5]

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. Charlie Savage (2017-01-05). "4 Yemeni Detainees at Guantánamo Are Transferred to Saudi Arabia". New York Times. Washington DC. Retrieved 2017-01-05. The Pentagon announced on Thursday that it had transferred four Yemeni detainees from the wartime prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to Saudi Arabia, beginning an expected flurry of transfers in the waning days of the Obama administration.
  3. Edward Mickolus (2018). Terrorism Worldwide, 2017. McFarland Publishing. p. 107. ISBN 9781476634005.
  4. Katie Paul; Matt Spetalnick (2017-01-05). "Four Yemeni detainees transferred from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia". Reuters. Riyadh/Washington DC. Retrieved 2020-08-01. The Pentagon sent four Yemeni detainees from the Guantanamo Bay military prison to Saudi Arabia on Thursday, launching President Barack Obama’s final flurry of prisoner transfers despite Donald Trump’s demand for a freeze.
  5. "Obama releases Guantanamo Bay detainees against Trump's directive". Nigerian Vanguard. New York City. 2017-01-06. Retrieved 2020-08-01. The Department of Defence, in a statement obtained by a correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in New York, gave the names of the detainees as Salem Ahmad Hadi Bin Kanad, Muhammed Rajab Sadiq Abu Ghanim, Abdallah Yahya Yusif Al-Shibli, and Muhammad Ali Abdallah Muhammad Bwazir.
  6. Abdul Hadi Habtor (2017-01-06). "Saudi Interior Ministry Receives 4 Yemeni Detainees from Guantanamo". Asharq Al-Awsat. Trump said on Tuesday all of those held at Guantanamo should remain. “These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield,” he tweeted.
  7. list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, April 20, 2006
  8. "Salim Ahmed Haddi Hathramoot: Guantanamo Bay detainee file on Salim Ahmed Haddi Hathramoot, US9YM-000131DP, passed to the Telegraph by Wikileaks". The Telegraph (UK). 2011-04-27. Retrieved 2016-07-09.
  9. "U.S. military reviews 'enemy combatant' use". USA Today. 2007-10-11. Archived from the original on 2012-08-11. Critics called it an overdue acknowledgment that the so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals are unfairly geared toward labeling detainees the enemy, even when they pose little danger. Simply redoing the tribunals won't fix the problem, they said, because the system still allows coerced evidence and denies detainees legal representation.
  10. Guantánamo Prisoners Getting Their Day, but Hardly in Court, New York Times, November 11, 2004 - mirror Archived 2007-09-30 at the Wayback Machine
  11. Inside the Guantánamo Bay hearings: Barbarian "Justice" dispensed by KGB-style "military tribunals", Financial Times, December 11, 2004
  12. "Q&A: What next for Guantanamo prisoners?". BBC News. 2002-01-21. Archived from the original on 24 November 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-24.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  13. Benjamin Wittes, Zaathira Wyne (2008-12-16). "The Current Detainee Population of Guantánamo: An Empirical Study". The Brookings Institution. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-06-22. Retrieved 2010-02-16.
  14. OARDEC (7 October 2004). "Summary of Evidence for Combatant Status Review Tribunal -- redacted" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. pp. 181–182. Archived from the original (PDF) on 31 July 2006.
  15. OARDEC (7 October 2004). "Summary of Evidence for Combatant Status Review Tribunal -- Ben Kend, Salem Ahmed" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. pp. 42–43. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 December 2007. Retrieved 2007-12-04.
  16. OARDEC (2005). "Summary of Administrative Review Board Proceedings of ISN" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. pp. 153–157. Retrieved 2007-12-04.
  17. Christopher Hope, Robert Winnett, Holly Watt, Heidi Blake (2011-04-27). "WikiLeaks: Guantanamo Bay terrorist secrets revealed -- Guantanamo Bay has been used to incarcerate dozens of terrorists who have admitted plotting terrifying attacks against the West – while imprisoning more than 150 totally innocent people, top-secret files disclose". The Telegraph (UK). Archived from the original on 2012-07-13. Retrieved 2012-07-13. The Daily Telegraph, along with other newspapers including The Washington Post, today exposes America’s own analysis of almost ten years of controversial interrogations on the world’s most dangerous terrorists. This newspaper has been shown thousands of pages of top-secret files obtained by the WikiLeaks website.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  18. "WikiLeaks: The Guantánamo files database". The Telegraph (UK). 2011-04-27. Archived from the original on 2015-06-26. Retrieved 2012-07-10.
  19. Marine Koren (2016-05-12). "Who Is Left at Guantanamo? And who can never leave?". Atlantic magazine. Retrieved 2020-08-01. This week, the board cleared for release Salem Ahmed Hadi, a suspected jihadist who left Yemen for Afghanistan before 9/11 and arrived at Guantanamo in its second week of existence. It was his fifth time before the board, which had previously rejected releasing him.
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