Omar Deghayes
Encyclopedia
Omar Deghayes is a Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....

n citizen with residency status in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, who was arrested in Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 in 2002. He currently lives in the United Kingdom.
After his arrest, he was taken into US military custody and sent to Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 727.

His lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith
Clive Stafford Smith
Clive Adrian Stafford Smith OBE is a British [see talk] lawyer who specialises in the areas of civil rights and the death penalty in the United States of America....

 alleges that Deghayes was blinded by pepper spray
Pepper spray
Pepper spray, also known as OC spray , OC gas, and capsicum spray, is a lachrymatory agent that is used in riot control, crowd control and personal self-defense, including defense against dogs and bears...

 inside the prison.

Deghayes' father was a union organiser who was executed in Libya while Omar was still a child. After this the family moved to the United Kingdom as refugees. They lived in Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...

 According to the Birmingham Post
Birmingham Post
The Birmingham Post newspaper was originally published under the name Daily Post in Birmingham, England, in 1857 by John Frederick Feeney. It was the largest selling broadsheet in the West Midlands, though it faced little if any competition in this category. It changed to tabloid size in 2008...

 Deghayes was a "laws graduate"; he studied law at the University of Wolverhampton
University of Wolverhampton
The University of Wolverhampton is a British university located on four campuses across the West Midlands and Shropshire. The city campus is located in Wolverhampton city centre with a second campus at Compton Park, Wolverhampton; a third in Walsall and a fourth in Telford...

 and later studied in Huddersfield
Huddersfield
Huddersfield is a large market town within the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England, situated halfway between Leeds and Manchester. It lies north of London, and south of Bradford, the nearest city....

.

His family has mounted a campaign to free Deghayes. This campaign has received the support of the Brighton Argus
The Argus (Brighton)
The Argus is a local newspaper based in Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, with editions serving the city of Brighton and Hove and the other parts of both East and West Sussex.-History:...

 newspaper and all six Members of Parliament in Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

, where Omar Deghayes resided for many years and where his family still live.

On February 3, 2005 US District Court Justice Joyce Hens Green
Joyce Hens Green
Judge Joyce Hens Green is a Senior United States District Court Judge for the District of Columbia.-Childhood:Green was born in 1928 in New York City. Her father was a psychiatrist and her mother was a homemaker. She had one brother...

 ordered that Deghayes, among other Guantánamo detainees, should be protected by the fifth amendment to the US Constitution.

In 2006, the British High Court
High Court of Justice
The High Court of Justice is, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, one of the Senior Courts of England and Wales...

 considered whether the United Kingdom government should petition the United States government, on behalf of Guantánamo detainees who had legal residency status. The High Court concluded that they did not have the authority to make recommendation in the area of foreign affairs. They also called the evidence that the British residents were being torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

d was "powerful".

The British government requested his release in August 2007, citing new openness on the part of the American administration. He was released on 18 December 2007; on his return to Britain, he was arrested under a Spanish warrant and has been released on bail while his case is considered.

Arrest

The "Save Omar" campaign has stated that Deghayes, who had moved temporarily to Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 with his Afghan wife and child, was arrested, along with his family, by bounty hunters in Pakistan and taken to Bagram Theater Internment Facility
Bagram Theater Internment Facility
The Parwan Detention Facility , also called the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, is a United States-run prison located next to Bagram Airfield in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan.It was formerly known as the Bagram Collection Point...

. His wife and child were later released.

Abuse claims

Deghayes has claimed that Guantanamo guards held him down and sprayed pepper spray directly into his eyes.
Deghayes says that they then rubbed a rag soaked in pepper spray into the cornea of his right eye, which had already been weakened by a blow he received when he was a child. He says that he is now blind in that eye.

According to Deghayes's account: "...troops marched into his cellblock 'singing and laughing' before spraying his face with mace and digging their fingers into his eyes as an officer shouted 'More! More.' ...My eye has gone a milky white color ... After all I have been through in my life to save it."

The DoD declined to comment on specific abuse claims.
However, DoD spokesman Lieutenant Commander
Lieutenant Commander
Lieutenant Commander is a commissioned officer rank in many navies. The rank is superior to a lieutenant and subordinate to a commander...

 Flex Plexico repeated his counter-claim that al Qaeda training manuals
Al Qaeda Handbook
The Al Qaeda Handbook is an extensive manual for how to wage war, allegedly written by Osama bin Laden's extremist group, Al Qaeda.This handbook provides religious justifications and quotations from the Qur'an throughout. It was first seized by British authorities in a raid on an Al Qaeda cell in...

 instruct al Qaeda members to lie about abuse, if captured, to trigger international outrage. He called Guantanamo:"...a safe, humane and professional detention operation..."

On August 10, 2007, Deghayes's family released a detailed dossier listing the tortures he claims to have been subjected to while in U.S. custody.
Deghayes reported that he:
  • Saw a soldier shoot a captive.
  • Witnessed the partial drowning of captives.
  • Saw a guard throw a Koran into a toilet.
  • Saw a Moroccan/Italian named Abdulmalik beaten to death.
  • Saw another captive beaten until the floor poured with blood, and he was left permanently brain-damaged.
  • Was permanently blinded when a guard stuck his finger in his eye.
  • Had excrement smeared on his face.
  • Experienced sexual abuse
    Sexual abuse
    Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is the forcing of undesired sexual behavior by one person upon another. When that force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser or molester...

    , which was too traumatic to be described in detail.
  • Was subjected to electric shocks.
  • Was kept naked in the freezing cold and had freezing water thrown on him.
  • Was starved for forty-five days.
  • Received repeated death threats.

Facial recognition

One of the allegations Deghayes faced was that American intelligence analysts had acquired a video-tape that identified Deghayes as one of the individuals in an Chechnya
Chechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...

n rebel video tape.
However, the opinion of Professor Tim Valentine
Tim Valentine
Itimous Thaddeus Valentine, Jr. , generally known as Tim Valentine, was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from North Carolina from 1983 to 1995....

 of Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom which specialises in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1891 as Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute...

, a facial recognition expert, is that the face in the videotape could not possibly be Deghayes. It lacks the clearly identifiable marks left by a childhood injury.

Clive Stafford Smith
Clive Stafford Smith
Clive Adrian Stafford Smith OBE is a British [see talk] lawyer who specialises in the areas of civil rights and the death penalty in the United States of America....

 said that the face in the videotape was eventually identified as a Chechen
Chechen people
Chechens constitute the largest native ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region. They refer to themselves as Noxçi . Also known as Sadiks , Gargareans, Malkhs...

 named Abu Walid.
He said the face looked more like Fidel Castro than his client.

Hunger strikes

Deghayes was one of the hunger strikers who joined the most publicized hunger strike at the camp, said to have been triggered by the beating of Hisham Sliti
Hisham Sliti
Hisham Sliti, a Tunisian, is currently being held as an enemy combatant in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.The list of the names of all the Guantanamo detainees states that his date of birth was February 12, 1966, in Hamam Lif, TunisiaAs of Aug...

.

According to an article by Clive Stafford Smith, Deghayes wrote:
"I am slowly dying in this solitary prison cell, I have no rights, no hope. So why not take my destiny into my own hands, and die for a principle?"

Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Initially the Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

 Presidency asserted that they could withhold all the protections of the Geneva Conventions
Geneva Conventions
The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of the victims of war...

 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 tribunal
Competent tribunal
Competent Tribunal is a term used Article 5 paragraph 2 of the Third Geneva Convention, which states:-ICRC commentary on competent tribunals:...

s to determine whether captives are, or are not, entitled to the protections of prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...

 status.

Subsequently the Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...

 instituted the Combatant Status Review Tribunal
Combatant Status Review Tribunal
The Combatant Status Review Tribunals were a set of tribunals for confirming whether detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had been correctly designated as "enemy combatants". The CSRTs were established July 7, 2004 by order of U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense...

s. 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 Presidency's definition of an enemy combatant
Enemy combatant
Enemy combatant is a term historically referring to members of the armed forces of the state with which another state is at war. Prior to 2008, the definition was: "Any person in an armed conflict who could be properly detained under the laws and customs of war." In the case of a civil war or an...

.

Summary of Evidence memo

A Summary of Evidence memo
Summary of Evidence (CSRT)
Counter-terrorism analysts prepared a Summary of Evidence memo for the Combatant Status Review Tribunals of the 558 captives who remained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba in the fall of 2004.-The 2005 release:...

 was prepared for Omar Amer Deghayes's Combatant Status Review Tribunal, on 27 September 2004.
The memo listed the following allegations against him:

Administrative Review Board hearing

Detainees who were determined to have been properly classified as "enemy combatants" were scheduled to have their dossier reviewed at annual Administrative Review Board
Administrative Review Board
The Administrative Review Board is a United States military body that conducts an annual review of the suspects held by the United States in Camp Delta in the United States Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba....

 hearings. The Administrative Review Boards weren't authorized to review whether a detainee qualified for POW status, and they weren't authorized to review whether a detainee should have been classified as an "enemy combatant".

They were authorized to consider whether a detainee should continue to be detained by the United States, because they continued to pose a threat – or whether they could safely be repatriated to the custody of their home country, or whether they could be set free.

First annual Administrative Review Board

A Summary of Evidence memo
Summary of Evidence (ARB)
Counter-terrorism analysts prepared a Summary of Evidence memo for the Administrative Review Board hearings of approximately 460 captives in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba from December 2004 to December 2005.-Release of the memos:...

 was prepared for Omar Amer Deghayes's first annual Administrative Review Board, on May 24, 2005.
The memo listed factors for and against his continued detention.

The following primary factors favor continued detention

The following primary factors favor release or transfer

Transcript

Omar Deghayes's Presiding Officer
Presiding Officer (ARB)
Every Administrative Review Board, run under the authority of the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants, was commanded by a Presiding Officer....


concluded that he chose not to attend his Administrative Review Board hearing.

Second annual Administrative Review Board

A Summary of Evidence memo
Summary of Evidence (ARB)
Counter-terrorism analysts prepared a Summary of Evidence memo for the Administrative Review Board hearings of approximately 460 captives in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba from December 2004 to December 2005.-Release of the memos:...

 was prepared for Omar Amer Deghayes's second annual Administrative Review Board, on 8 August 2006.
The memo listed factors for and against his continued detention.

The following primary factors favor continued detention

The following primary factors favor release or transfer

Release

On August 7, 2007 the United Kingdom government requested the release of Omar Deghayes and four other detainees who had been legal British residents.
The UK government warned that the negotiations might take months.

On 18 December 2007, Deghayes was freed from Guantanamo Bay and subsequently flown to the UK.

Spanish extradition request

On his return, Deghayes and Jamil El-Banna were arrested and questioned, before appearing in court on a Spanish extradition warrant.
He was freed on bail on 20 December, conditions of which include obeying a curfew and wearing an electronic tag.

On Thursday March 6, 2008 Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon
Baltasar Garzón
Baltasar Garzón Real is a Spanish jurist who served on Spain's central criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional. He was the examining magistrate of the Juzgado Central de Instrucción No...

 dropped the extradition request on humanitarian grounds.
Garzon based his decision on a medical examination made public on February 12, 2008.
The report said Deghayes suffered from: "post-traumatic stress syndrome, severe depression and suicidal tendencies
Suicidal tendencies
Suicidal tendencies is the propensity for a person to have suicidal ideation or to make suicide attempts. It may also refer to:* Suicidal Tendencies, a band that was founded in Venice, Los Angeles, California, in 1981 by the leader and only permanent member, singer Mike Muir* Suicide, the act of a...

. Garzon ruled the two men's mental health had deteriorated so badly it would be cruel to prosecute them.

Torture claims investigation

On April 29, 2009, that Spanish investigating magistrate Baltazar Garzon initiated a formal investigation into whether confessions from Deghayes
and three other former Guantanamo captives were the result of the use of abusive interrogation techniques.
Deghayes and the three other men:
Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, Lahcen Ikassrien
Lahcen Ikassrien
Lahcen Ikassrien is a citizen of Morocco who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.Ikassrien's Guantanamo ISN was 72....

, and Jamiel Abdul Latif al Banna, had previously faced charges in Spanish courts, based on confessions they made while in US custody.
Their charges had been dropped based on their claims that their confessions were false and were the result of abusive interrogation techniques.

Current status

Deghayes conducted an interview with the Guardian newspaper, published on January 21, 2010.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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