Adel Hassan Hamad

Adel Hassan Hamad is a citizen of Sudan, who was held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba.[1] Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts estimate he was born in 1958, in Port Sudan, Sudan. Adel Hassan was repatriated to Sudan without charges on December 12, 2007.[2]

Adel Hassan Hamad
Born1958 (age 62–63)
Port Sudan, Sudan
ArrestedJuly 18, 2002
Detained atGuantanamo
ISN940
Charge(s)No charge
StatusRepatriated
OccupationHospital administrator

Representing Adel: The Case of Guantanamo Detainee 940

William Teesdale, a Portland, Oregon public defender, who is part of a team defending several Guantanamo captives, wrote a description of his team's work representing Adel.[3] He wrote:

"Then, in May, 2005, the Government produced the factual return, as ordered by the District Court. We learned something stunning. There was a dissenting voice on the military CSRT panel that declared Adel an Enemy Combatant. An army major, whose name is classified, had the courage to file a dissenting report calling the result in Adel’s case 'unconscionable.'"

Teesdale described traveling to Afghanistan, and searching for witnesses who could prove Adel's innocence.[3] Teesdale wrote:

"All of the information gathered in this investigation was filed with the court in Mr. Hamad’s case in the form of a motion for summary judgment. On October 17, 2006 President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, which attempts to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear Guantanamo detainee habeas cases. All of our cases are presently stayed pending resolution of this issue."

Habeas corpus

On October 5, 2007 the lawyers for Adel Hassan Hamad filed an affidavit from an officer who had served with OARDEC who had criticisms of the process.[4] The officer, an Army reservist whose name was redacted, was a prosecutor in civilian life. He wrote of the Tribunals: ``"training was minimal" -and- ``"the process was not well defined". The officer had sat on 49 Tribunals.

CBS News reports that the unnamed officer is a Major, who participated in meetings with the admiral in charge of OARDEC to discuss six instances where Tribunals that had determined captives were innocent had those determinations reversed by extraordinary second Tribunals.[5] CBS News speculated that the Army major was the Tribunal member who recorded a minority opinion in Adel Hassan Hamad's case, calling his detention "unconscionable" because it was not based on sufficient evidence.

The Army major has described "acrimony" at a meeting convened to discuss why some Tribunals determined Uyghur captives in Guantanamo were not enemy combatants, when other Tribunals determined they were, even though the Uyghurs cases were so similar.[5]

James R. Crisfield, the Legal Advisor who reviewed Tribunal determinations for "legal sufficiency" commented on the reasoning of the "dissenting Tribunal member":

The dissenting tribunal member also opined that there was insufficient evidence to prove that the detainee was part of or supporting al Qaeda forces engaged in hostilities against the U.S. or its coalition partners. In analyzing whether there was sufficient evidence to support a Tribunal's decision I have customarily used the test of whether there was sufficient evidence for a reasonable finder of fact to have found the detainee was an enemy combatant by a preponderance of the evidence. Given the low evidentiary hurdle posed by a preponderance of the evidence standard[6] and the rebuttable presumption of genuiness and accuracy that attaches to the Government evidence, I believe that that the test is satisfied in this case. That is to say that reasonable finders of face could determine that this detainee meets the definition of "enemy combatant" based on the evidence presented.

Release

He and fellow Sudanese Salim Mahmud Adam were repatriated on December 13, 2007.[7]

Lawsuit

On May 14, 2008 the Daily Times of Pakistan reported that "Salim Mahmud Adam" and "Adel Hasan Hamad" had announced plans to sue the United States government over their detention.[8] The article reports that he told the Daily Times that his 2004 Combatant Status Review Tribunal had cleared him of the allegation that he was an "enemy combatant".

Hassan filed suit against the government and several individuals in federal district court in Seattle in April, 2010.[9] His case was bolstered by an affidavit from Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who stated that top U.S. officials, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, had known that the majority of the detainees initially sent to Guantánamo were innocent, but that the detainees had been kept there for reasons of political expedience.[10][11]

Family

Hamad had daughter who was born after his arrest and who died before his release for lack of medical care.[12]

See also

References
  1. "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. Retrieved May 15, 2006. 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. "Adel Hassan – The Guantánamo Docket". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved December 28, 2009.
  3. William Teesdale (January 11, 2007). "Representing Adel: The Case of Guantanamo Detainee 940". The Jurist. Archived from the original on January 24, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2007.
  4. Ben Fox (October 6, 2007). "Second Army Officer Faults Gitmo Panels". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on December 3, 2007. Retrieved October 8, 2007.
  5. "Freed Gitmo Detainee Tells Of Desecration". CBS News. October 6, 2007. Archived from the original on January 19, 2008. Retrieved September 29, 2007.
  6. The preponderance of the evidence standard may be simply stated as "more likely than not."
  7. Ismail Kamal Kushkush (March 2008). "Two men speak of their lost years at Gitmo". Southern California InFocus. Archived from the original on November 22, 2008. Retrieved March 26, 2008.
  8. Akhtar Amin (May 14, 2008). "Two ex-Guantanamo detainees to sue US". Daily Times (Pakistan). Archived from the original on May 18, 2008. Retrieved May 13, 2008. In 2004, Hamad and Adam said they appeared before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal that cleared them of charges of being enemy combatants. However, it was not until September 2007 that a military court finally cleared them of charges of posing a threat to the United States.
  9. "Sudanese Man Sues After Release From Guantanamo", The New York Times, April 7, 2010, retrieved April 11, 2010
  10. Reid, Tim (April 9, 2010), "George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'", The Times, London, archived from the original on April 10, 2010, retrieved April 11, 2010
  11. Wilkerson, Lawrence (March 24, 2010). "DECLARATION OF COLONEL LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON (RET.)" (PDF). Truthout. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 10, 2010. Retrieved April 11, 2010.
  12. "Steven T. Wax, Oregon's federal public defender, has created a crack legal team to follow the rule of law, even fighting for those accused of terrorism". The Oregonian. June 11, 2011.

Further reading
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