Abdullah Gulam Rasoul

Abdullah Gulam Rasoul (born circa 1973) is a citizen of Afghanistan held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.
His Guantanamo Internee Security Number is 008.
JTF-GTMO analysts estimate he was born in 1973, in Helmand, Afghanistan.

Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Initially the Bush administration asserted that they could withhold all the protections of the Geneva Conventions 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 tribunals to determine whether captives are, or are not, entitled to the protections of prisoner of war status.

Subsequently the Department of Defense instituted the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. 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 administration's definition of an enemy combatant.

Rasoul chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

Unlike other detainee's transcripts Rasoul's does not contain a point by point response to the allegations Rasoul faced in his CSRT's "summary of evidence". The transcript is only two pages long.

Rasoul's statement
Rasoul had traveled to Kabul just because he wanted to see the big city, and was caught there during the US bombardment, where he was injured. After his wounds were treated at a Chinese hospital in Kandahar, he returned to Konduz, the nearest city to the village where he lived.

When he heard that the Americans were approaching Konduz he sought them out to surrender himself. He praised the American efforts to rebuild Afghanistan’s irrigation infrastructure. He told the Tribunal how his elders had praised the Americans for their help during the Soviet occupation. He said he had been showing pictures, in Guantanamo, showing the progress of the reconstruction, and that this made him happy with the American intervention.

Rasoul's testimony
He acknowledged that he was with a Taliban leader, when he surrendered, and that he had a rifle, when he surrendered. But he said the rifle was forced on him by the Taliban.

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 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.

The factors for and against continuing to detain Rasoul were among the 121 that the Department of Defense released on March 3 2006.
The following primary factors favor continued detention:
:a. Commitment
:#The detainee advised that he was called to fight Jihad in approximately 1997; he then went to Kabul to join the Taliban.
:#The detainee stated that he felt it would be fine to wage Jihad against Americans, Jews, or Israelis if they were invading his country.
:#The detainee was seriously wounded in a bombing shortly after joining the Taliban, and returned home to recuperate. In 1999, the detainee went to Kandahar to join up with the Taliban once again.
:#In approximately September of 2001, the detainee went to Konduz to join up with his Taliban comrades to fight the

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