Abdul Zahir (Guantanamo Bay detainee 753)

For other uses, see Abdul Zahir (disambiguation).
Abdul Zahir
Abdul Zahir's Guantanamo ID portrait
Born1972 (age 51–52)[1][2]
Logar Province, Afghanistan
Detained at Guantanamo
ISN753
Charge(s)War crimes charges against Mr. Zahir have been dismissed
Status"Temporarily" transferred to Oman

Abdul Zahir (عبدالظاهر; born 1972) is a citizen of Afghanistan, who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.[3] He was the tenth captive, and the first Afghan, to face charges before the first Presidentially authorized Guantanamo military commissions.[4][5][6] After the US Supreme Court ruled that the President lacked the constitutional authority to set up military commissions, the United States Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. He was not charged under that system.

Zahir was approved for transfer on July 11, 2016.[7] On January 17, 2017, four days before the inauguration of Donald Trump, ten men were transferred from Guantanamo, while American and Omani officials declined to identify the men, Abdul Zahir's lawyer told the Associated Press that he had been released.[8][9][10]

  1. ^ "JTF- GTMO Detainee Assessment" (PDF). Department of Defense. 21 January 2008. Retrieved 8 April 2023.
  2. ^ "Guantanamo Detainee Profile" (PDF). 3 February 2015. Retrieved 8 April 2023.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference DoDList2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Priti Patel; Avi Cover (2006-10-30). "There are No Rules Here: A Visitor's Guide to Guantanamo and the Military Commissions". samarmagazine.org. Archived from the original on 2012-09-27. So we now know that Binyam Muhammad has a wonderful sense of humor and a flare for out-of-context idioms; Abdul Zahir, the only Afghan charged before the commissions, is quiet and self-contained; Omar Khadr, a nineteen-year-old who has spent his teenage years at Guantanamo, has the freshly scrubbed look of teenage boy anywhere in the world.
  5. ^ Jaime Jansen (2006-01-20). "US charges tenth Guantanamo detainee". The Jurist. Archived from the original on 2011-03-13. Abdul Zahir has been formally charged with conspiracy, aiding the enemy and attacking civilians, and is accused of working as a translator and money-man for former Taliban rulers in Afghanistan and with al Qaeda. The accusations also implicate Zahir in a 2002 grenade attack that injured three journalists.
  6. ^ "Alleged Qaeda Member Faces Tribunal". CBS News. 2012-04-04. Archived from the original on 2012-03-24. Abdul Zahir sat down at the defense table, wearing no handcuffs and appearing relaxed, inside the tribunal building perched on a hill on this U.S. military base. His U.S. military defense counsel almost immediately began asking the judge, Marine Col. Robert S. Chester, what laws he would follow in presiding over the trial. The Guantanamo Bay trials are the first military tribunals held by the U.S. military since the World War II era.
  7. ^ "Vermont lawyer says Guantanamo client cleared for release". washingtontimes.com.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Npr2017-01-17 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference MiamiHerald2017-01-17 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference WashingtonTimes2017-01-16 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).