Obaidullah (detainee)

On August 15, 2016, the USA transferred Obaidullah, and fourteen other men, to the United Arab Emirates. Like Obaidullah, Mohammed Kamin, another Afghan, had faced charges under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, but wasn't recharged when the US Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2009.

Obaidullah appears on a Department Defense list of "71 Guantanamo Detainees Determined Eligible to Receive a Periodic Review Board as of April 19, 2014." Obaidullah was participating in a hunger strike along with half of the other Guantanamo detainees as of April 23, 2013. Obaidullah received his Periodic Review Board (PRB) hearing on April 19, 2016. The decision of the PRB was released Friday, May 20, 2016, and the PRB approved Obaidullah for release into an appropriate environment in an accepting nation, not necessarily his original home country of Afghanistan, similar to conditions placed upon previously released detainees.

In February 2013, more than a decade after his arrival at Guantanamo, Obaidullah began a hunger strike. According to Obaidullah, he joined a hunger strike spurred by "invasive" cell searches conducted in February 2013. The removal of items including his family photos and mail from his attorneys, he said, was "especially distressing for me because I have nothing to provoke the authorities to take my belongings and comfort items that gave me a small sense of humanity."

On February 26, 2013, Obaidullah filed a petition for writ of certiorari in the US Supreme Court.

When he assumed office in January 2009 President Barack Obama made a number of promises about the future of Guantanamo. He promised the use of torture would cease at the camp. He promised to institute a new review system. That new review system was composed of officials from six departments, where the OARDEC reviews were conducted entirely by the Department of Defense. When it reported back, a year later, the Joint Review Task Force classified some individuals as too dangerous to be transferred from Guantanamo, even though there was no evidence to justify laying charges against them. On April 9, 2013, that document was made public after a Freedom of Information Act request. Obaidullah was one of the 71 individuals deemed too innocent to charge, but too dangerous to release. Although Obama promised that those deemed too innocent to charge, but too dangerous to release would start to receive reviews from a Periodic Review Board less than a quarter of men have received a review.

Obaidullah appealed the decision, and In August 2012, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied the appeal, affirming the lower court's ruling. The court held that the lower court had correctly determined that it was "more likely than not" that Obaidullah was a member of al Qaeda, relying on the secret source whose tip to the U.S. military led to the raid on Obaidullah's family compound. The identity of this source and the information received have not been revealed to Obaidullah or his attorneys.

On February 8, 2012, Obaidullah's lawyers moved to reopen the record. This would allow Obaidullah a new trial in the district court on the grounds that new evidence had been uncovered. This evidence was attested to in a declaration by Lieutenant Commander Richard Pandis, an NCIS investigator assigned to the case. The motion was denied on January 30, 2013.

On April 25, 2011, whistleblower organization WikiLeaks published formerly secret assessments drafted by Joint Task Force Guantanamo analysts. His 8-page Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment was drafted on June 16, 2008. It was signed by camp commandant Rear Admiral David M Thomas Jr. He recommended continued detention at Guantanamo.

On June 7, 2011, the Convening Authority for the military commissions dismissed the charges without prejudice. There are currently no charges pending against him.

On October 19, 2010, Judge Richard Leon of the U.S District Court of the District of Columbia ruled that Obaidullah's detention was lawful. Judge Leon denied Obaidullah's petition for writ of habeas corpus after finding he was "more likely than not" an insurgent.

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

Following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantanamo detainees are entitled to habeas corpus proceedings, Obaidullah filed a petition for habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in July 2008. Two months later, the Bush administration filed charges against him in the military commissions at Guantanamo.

On September 10, 2008, charges were filed against Obaidullah for "conspiracy" and "providing material support for terrorism" under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. According to Reuters:

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. 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.

Obaidullah testified at his 2004 and 2005 hearings.

Obaidullah (born 1980) is a citizen of Afghanistan who was one of the last remaining Afghan detainees held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba. He was captured as an Enemy combatant on July 20, 2002, transferred to Guantanamo on October 28, 2002, and transferred to the United Arab Emirates on August 15, 2016. Obaidullah's Guantanamo Internment Serial Number is 762. American intelligence analysts estimate that Obaidullah was born in 1980 in Khowst, Afghanistan.

On July 20, 2002, two dozen American Special Armed Forces soldiers, acting on an anonymous tip, raided Obaidullah's family home and took him into custody along with his cousins. At the time, Obaidullah was carrying a notebook which the U.S alleges contained diagrams for improvised explosive devices.

Obaidullah was transferred to Guantanamo on October 28, 2002.