Fayad Yahya Ahmed

Fayad Yahya Ahmed al Rami is a citizen of Yemen who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba for seven and a half years. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 683. American intelligence analysts estimate that he was born in 1977, in Aden, Yemen. He was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 and had been sent home to Yemen without charge by December 20, 2009.

Combatant Status Review Tribunal

File:Trailer where CSR Tribunals were held.jpg

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a trailer the size of a large RV. The captive sat on a plastic garden chair, with his hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor. Three chairs were reserved for members of the press, but only 37 of the 574 Tribunals were observed.

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.

Allegations

During the winter and spring of 2005 the Department of Defense complied with a Freedom of Information Act request, and released five files that contained 507 memoranda which each summarized the allegations against a single detainee. These memos, entitled "Summary of Evidence" were prepared for the detainee's Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The detainee's names and ID numbers were redacted from all but one of these memos, when they were first released in 2005. But some of them contain notations in pen. 169 of the memos bear a hand-written notation specifying the detainee's ID number. One of the memos had a notation specifying Fayad Yahya Ahmed's detainee ID. The allegations Ahmed faced, during his Tribunal, were:

a. The detainee is a supporter of al Qaida:

1. The detainee is a ########## who traveled to Pakistan via Yemen; Karachi, Pakistan and finally to Lahore, Pakistan prior to 11 September 2001.
2. The detainee was recruited by a member of the Jama'at al-Tabligh.
3. Jama'at al-Tabligh, a Pakistani based Islamic missionary organization is being used as a cover to mask travel and activities of terrorists including members of al-Qaida.
4. The detainee lived in ######### with other Yemeni students.
5. The detainee was arrested at ######## during a raid by the Pakistani police.
6. The detainee was transferred to a prison in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Tribunal

Ahmed chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

Repatriation

Carol Rosenberg, writing in the Miami Herald reported that Fayad Yahya Ahmed al Rami [sic] was one of twelve men transferred from Guantanamo on December 19, 2009. The other eleven men were: Ayman Batarfi, Jamal Alawi Mari, Farouq Ali Ahmed, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, Riyad Atiq Ali Abdu al Haf, Abdul Hafiz, Sharifullah, Mohamed Rahim, Mohammed Hashim, Ismael Arale and Mohamed Suleiman Barre. Abdul Hafiz, Sharifullah, Mohamed Rahim and Mohammed Hashim were Afghans. Asmael Arale and Mohamed Suleiman Barre were Somalis. The other five men were fellow Yemenis.