Ahmed Adil

Template:Short description Ahmed Adil (born 1973) is a citizen of China who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps in Cuba.

Detention

Adil's Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 260. American intelligence analysts estimate he was born in 1973 in Kashgar, Xinjiang, China.

Adil is one of approximately two dozen detainees from the Uyghur ethnic group. Adil is one of approximately half a dozen Uyghurs whose Combatant Status Review Tribunals determined they were not enemy combatants after all. Five of the Uyghurs were transferred to Albania. Several others had new Tribunals convened that reversed the earlier determination.

Alleged affiliation with Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement

He is one of approximately two dozen Uyghur captives accused by security officials of membership in the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, which China considers to be both terrorist and secessionist.

Documents released in response to the writ of habeas corpus Hassan Anvar v. George W. Bush contained a December 30, 2004 memo which provided one-paragraph information of 22 Uyghur detainees, all the detainees faced allegations from Joint Task Force Guantanamo intelligence officials of having received training at an "ETIM training camp".

The information about Ahmed Adil stated:

Ahmed Adil is a 31-year-old Chinese Citizen who is an ethnic Uighur from the Xinjiang province of China. Adil was last interviewed in the end of 2002. He has no reported incidents of violence in his discipline history. Adil is suspected as [sic] being a probable member of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). He is suspected of having received training in an ETIM training camp in Afghanistan.

The information paper also identified him as "Ahnad Adil".

Combatant Status Review

In response to legal and public pressure, the U.S. Department of Defense established Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) to determine whether detainees at Guantanamo were properly classified as enemy combatants. These proceedings followed the Bush administration’s position that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to individuals who were not members of a regular armed force. Critics argued that the Conventions required competent tribunals to assess the status of detainees.

According to the Department of Defense, an enemy combatant was defined as:

"An individual who was part of, or supported, the Taliban or al-Qaeda forces or associated forces engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. This includes any person who has committed a belligerent act or directly supported such hostilities."

Unlike civilian courts, CSRTs operated under relaxed rules of evidence. The government’s submissions were presumed to be “genuine and accurate.” Between July 2004 and March 2005, CSRTs were convened for each Guantanamo detainee to review their classification.

Ahmed Adil’s Participation and Allegations

Ahmed Adil was among the approximately 60% of detainees who participated in their tribunal proceedings. A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for each tribunal, listing the allegations that formed the basis for the detainee’s classification.

According to Adil’s memo:

• He traveled from Pakistan to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in 2001 to receive training.
• He stayed at a Uyghur camp in the Tora Bora mountains for about 45 days.
• While there, he learned how to disassemble a Kalashnikov rifle.
• He was present in Tora Bora during the U.S. bombing campaign.
• He was captured by Pakistani soldiers while fleeing Afghanistan with other Uyghur and Arab men.

The memo further cited intelligence linking Uyghur groups, including the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and the East Turkistan Liberation Organization (ETLO), to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. ETIM was identified in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Terrorist Organization Reference Guide as one of the most militant groups with alleged training and financial ties to al-Qaeda.

On March 3, 2006, a six-page summary transcript of Adil’s CSRT was released by the Department of Defense, in response to a court order issued by Judge Jed Rakoff.

Letter to the Secretary of State

Adil wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on January 19, 2006. In his letter, and he noted that his Tribunal determined he was innocent on May 9, 2005. He said he was appealing directly to Rice because he had tried all other options.

Asylum in Albania

On May 5, 2006, the Department of Defense announced that they had transferred five Uyghurs, who had been determined not to have been enemy combatants, to Albania. Seventeen other Uyghurs continue to be held at Guantanamo because their CSRTs decided they were enemy combatants.

The McClatchy interview

On June 15, 2008, the McClatchy News Service published articles based on interviews with 66 former Guantanamo captives. McClatchy reporters interviewed Ahmed Adil. During his interview Ahmed Adil described life in the Uyghur construction camp:

It was a simple life, but there was food and shelter and company. I'd only been there 45 days when the bombing started. At first, I wasn't worried because it had nothing to do with me. But then it did. The bombs got close.

Ahmed Adil told his interviewers that he spent long periods in solitary confinement, in a cell that was only 3 x 6 feet, and that he was always chained to the floor during his interrogations.