Abdul Latif Nasir

Abdul Latif Nasir (Arabic: عبد اللطيف ناصر) is a Moroccan man formerly held in administrative detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.[3] His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 244. Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts report he was born on March 4, 1965, in Casablanca, Morocco. Abdul Latif Nasir and Sufyian Barhoumi tried to file emergency requests to be transferred from Guantanamo in the final days of Barack Obama's presidency.[4]

Abdul Latif Nasir
Born (1965-03-04) March 4, 1965[1][2]
Casablanca, Morocco
Detained at Guantanamo (released July 19, 2021)
ISN244
Charge(s)None
StatusReleased

His story was covered on a podcast by Radiolab, called The Other Latif, which was hosted by the similarly named Latif Nasser.

He was released on July 19, 2021, as part of an effort by the Biden administration to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.[5]

Inconsistent identification

Nasser was identified inconsistently on official Department of Defense documents:

Life in Guantanamo

Nasir was captured in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 by fighters of the Northern Alliance. His attorneys claimed he was given to the US Military for a bounty. He was transferred to Guantanamo in 2002.[13] In Guantanamo, he compiled a 2000 word Arabic to English, English to Arabic dictionary.[14]

Official status reviews

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.[15] In 2004 the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to be informed of the allegations against them, and were entitled to challenge their detention.

Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants
Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a 3x5 meter trailer where the captive sat with his hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor.[16][17]

Following the Supreme Court's ruling the Department of Defense set up the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants.[15][18]

Scholars at the Brookings Institution, led by Benjamin Wittes, listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention without charges was justified by evidence of common allegations:[19]

  • Abdul Latif Nasir was listed as one of the captives who "The military alleges ... traveled to Afghanistan for jihad."[19]
  • Abdul Latif Nasir was listed as one of the captives who "The military alleges that the following detainees stayed in Al Qaeda, Taliban or other guest- or safehouses."[19]
  • Abdul Latif Nasir was listed as one of the captives who "The military alleges ... took military or terrorist training in Afghanistan."[19]
  • Abdul Latif Nasir was listed as one of the captives who "The military alleges ... fought for the Taliban."[19]
  • Abdul Latif Nasir was listed as one of the captives who "The military alleges ... were at Tora Bora."[19]
  • Abdul Latif Nasir was listed as one of the captives whose "names or aliases were found on material seized in raids on Al Qaeda safehouses and facilities."[19]
  • Abdul Latif Nasir was listed as one of the captives who "The military alleges that the following detainees were captured under circumstances that strongly suggest belligerency."[19]
  • Abdul Latif Nasir was listed as one of the captives who was a member of the "al Qaeda leadership cadre".[19]
  • Abdul Latif Nasir was listed as one of the "82 detainees made no statement to CSRT or ARB tribunals or made statements that do not bear materially on the military's allegations against them."[19]

Formerly secret Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment

On April 25, 2011, whistleblower organization WikiLeaks published formerly secret assessments drafted by Joint Task Force Guantanamo analysts.[20][21] His 15-page Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment was drafted on October 22, 2008.[22] It was signed by camp commandant Rear Admiral David M. Thomas Jr. He recommended continued detention.

Guantanamo Joint Review Task Force

Carol Rosenberg, of the Miami Herald worked for years to get the Department of Defense to release its classification of the remaining captives.[23] In 2013 she was able to learn that Abdul Latif Nasser was one of 48 captives for whom there was no evidence for being held, and who officials nevertheless regarded as too potentially dangerous to release -- "forever prisoners".

Status during the Trump administration

President Barack Obama's administration pushed to transfer as many individuals from Guantanamo as possible during his last year.[24] The Washington Post reported that Abdul Latif Nasir was one of five individuals who had been cleared for release, but remained in Guantanamo when President Donald Trump was inaugurated.

In 2020, Latif's case was covered by the Radiolab podcast in a series titled "The Other Latif", reported by a journalist having the same name, which attracted attention.[25]

Release

On July 19, 2021, he was released and repatriated to Morocco.[26] He had been recommended for discharge since 2016. Nasser's family members in Casablanca pledged to support him by finding him work in his brother's swimming pool cleaning business, according to his lawyer Thomas Anthony Durkin. He was detained for 19 years and was never charged.[27]

References
  1. Abdul Latif Nasir Detainee
  2. Detainee Assessment
  3. OARDEC (May 15, 2006). "List of Individuals Detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002 through May 15, 2006" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
  4. "2 Guantanamo prisoners ask for release before Trump takes office". Business Standard. 2017-01-17. Retrieved 2017-01-17. Lawyers for two lower-level detainees from the wartime prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, are urgently asking a court to send them home before Trump takes office, specially after 10 such prisoners were released, media reports said.
  5. Rosenberg, Carol; Savage, Charlie (July 19, 2021). "Biden Administration Transfers Its First Detainee From Guantánamo Bay". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 19, 2021.
  6. OARDEC (21 November 2005). "Unclassified Summary of Evidence for Administrative Review Board in the case of Nasir, Abdul Latif" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. pp. 1–6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 December 2007. Retrieved 2008-03-03.
  7. OARDEC (29 November 2004). "Summary of Evidence for Combatant Status Review Tribunal - Nasir, Abdul Latif" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. pp. 74–75. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 December 2007. Retrieved 2008-02-01.
  8. OARDEC (April 20, 2006). "List of detainee who went through complete CSRT process" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 30, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
  9. OARDEC (July 17, 2007). "Index for Combatant Status Review Board unclassified summaries of evidence" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 3, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
  10. OARDEC (August 9, 2007). "Index to Summaries of Detention-Release Factors for ARB Round One" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 26, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
  11. OARDEC (July 17, 2007). "Index of Summaries of Detention-Release Factors for ARB Round Two" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 26, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
  12. OARDEC (17 October 2006). "Unclassified Summary of Evidence for Administrative Review Board in the case of Nasser, Abdulatif" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. pp. 93–96. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 December 2007. Retrieved 2008-03-01.
  13. "Abdul Latif Nasser Released from Guantanamo After 19 Years of Detention Without Charge". 19 July 2021.
  14. "Cleared Guantánamo Prisoner Files Last-Ditch Lawsuit Seeking Immediate Release". Reprieve. 2017-01-19. Abdul Latif Nasser, 51, was unanimously cleared by the Periodic Review Board for transfer home to Morocco on July 11, but remains imprisoned because the government's transfer process has been too slow. He now faces indefinite detention at the mercy of the Trump Administration.
  15. "U.S. military reviews 'enemy combatant' use". USA Today. Associated Press. October 11, 2007. Archived from the original on October 23, 2007. Critics called it an overdue acknowledgment that the so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals are unfairly geared toward labeling detainees the enemy, even when they pose little danger. Simply redoing the tribunals won't fix the problem, they said, because the system still allows coerced evidence and denies detainees legal representation.
  16. "Guantánamo Prisoners Getting Their Day, but Hardly in Court". The New York Times. November 11, 2004. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007.
  17. "Inside the Guantánamo Bay hearings: Barbarian "Justice" dispensed by KGB-style "military tribunals". Financial Times. December 11, 2004.
  18. "Q&A: What next for Guantanamo prisoners?". BBC News. 2002-01-21. Archived from the original on 23 November 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-24.
  19. Benjamin Wittes; Zaathira Wyne (2008-12-16). "The Current Detainee Population of Guantánamo: An Empirical Study" (PDF). The Brookings Institution. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-05-19. Retrieved 2010-02-16.
  20. Christopher Hope; Robert Winnett; Holly Watt; Heidi Blake (2011-04-27). "WikiLeaks: Guantanamo Bay terrorist secrets revealed -- Guantanamo Bay has been used to incarcerate dozens of terrorists who have admitted plotting terrifying attacks against the West – while imprisoning more than 150 totally innocent people, top-secret files disclose". The Telegraph (UK). Archived from the original on 2012-07-15. Retrieved 2012-07-13. The Daily Telegraph, along with other newspapers including The Washington Post, today exposes America's own analysis of almost ten years of controversial interrogations on the world's most dangerous terrorists. This newspaper has been shown thousands of pages of top-secret files obtained by the WikiLeaks website.
  21. "WikiLeaks: The Guantánamo files database". The Telegraph (UK). 2011-04-27. Archived from the original on 2015-06-26. Retrieved 2012-07-10.
  22. "Abdul Latif Nasir: Guantanamo Bay detainee file on Abdul Latif Nasir, US9MO-000244DP, passed to the Telegraph by Wikileaks". The Telegraph (UK). 2011-04-27. Retrieved 2017-01-17.
  23. Carol Rosenberg (2013-06-17). "FOAI suit reveals Guantanamo's 'indefinite detainees'". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on 2014-11-21. Retrieved 2016-08-18. The Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg, with the assistance of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at the Yale Law School, filed suit in federal court in Washington D.C., in March for the list under the Freedom of Information Act. The students, in collaboration with Washington attorney Jay Brown, represented Rosenberg in a lawsuit that specifically sought the names of the 46 surviving prisoners.
  24. Julie Tate, Missy Ryan (2017-01-22). "The Trump era has stranded these five men at Guantanamo Bay". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2017-01-22.
  25. Messman, Lauren (2020-02-03). "'Radiolab' Covers Guantánamo Bay Detainee in First Serialized Story". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  26. Jaffe, Dino Hazell and Alexandra (2021-07-19). "Guantanamo inmate sent to home country in Biden policy shift". CTVNews. Retrieved 2021-07-19.
  27. Rosenberg, Carol; Savage, Charlie (19 July 2021). "Biden Administration Transfers Its First Detainee From Guantánamo Bay". The New York Times.
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