Richard Dean Belmar

From dKosopedia

Category: Illegal combatants

Findings

These documents record a tribunal process determining that a person is found to be an "enemy combatant". So far as I can tell, the determination was affirmative, and from the documents Belmar would currently be being held in Guantanamo.

However, Susan Hu points out he has been released, which he certainly should not have been as a bureaucratic consequence of the documents seen here.

[I am not complaining he was released, but the documents here oppose release.]

References that he was not found to be a combatant are not supported by my reading of these documents. The prisoner was afraid of mistreatment, was in fear of mistreatment, but does not mention being mistreated. He appears to say he had heard unfavorable reports on Guantanamo that turned out not to be true.

Richard Belmar is an English Islamite. He traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, apparently to get away from the law, and become involved with a Muslim military training camp that turned out to be a training camp run by bin Laden. He actually heard bin Laden talk.

The first document is a US government filing to the US District Court for DC, relating to a case Belmar vs. the United States.

p.3, 11/2004 The Director, Combat Status Review Tribunals, concurs with the Tribunal finding that the accused is an enemy combatant.

p.4. 11/2004 Review confirming process issues related to the defendant's CSRT.

p.5. 10/2004 Order creating a specific CSRT. The panel is numbered 15.

PP6-9 The summary of the evidence against the accused. He went to Afghanistan, was trained, met Bin laden, had a chance to fight the Northern alliance, and swore an oath to bin Laden. The defendant's story differs.

He says he got training, never did guard duty, was part of a large group that listened to bin Laden, and never swore an oath. He says he was pressured by interrogators and made false statements to them.

p. 10. The defendant says that he received basic weapons, war tactics, and navigation training.

p. 11. -Defendant said that the interrogators told him to admit that he had sworn a loyalty oath "or we will send you to Cuba and if I lied everything I said would be a waste. They told me they would do this and that to me and I wouldn't get any sleep and they would punish me. At the time, I thought Cuba was a very bad place and I would be tortured and raped."

p.12. Discussing interrogation methods "....They move you around and give you a lot of trouble. They put you in cold rooms and make you sit for twenty hours. They do stuff like that here [apparently Guantanamo], too...and the prisoner therefore made statements to the interrogators he now claims are false.

p. 16 "The conditions at Bagram Air Force Base weren't very good. I saw a lot of things that they did to people that they thought weren't telling the truth or were withholding information. That scared me."

The 'they' are identified by the prisoner as Americans.

Prisoner testimony ends on p. 18.

There are then pages from redacted names swearing that the redacted information "does not support a determination that the detainee is not an enemy combatant."

CSRT=Combat Status Review Tribunal IA=Intelligence Analyst

Links

AP List of Detainees