Ghassan al-Sharbi

Ghassan Abdallah Ghazi al-Sharbi (born 28 December 1974) is a Saudi citizen who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.

His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 682.

The US Department of Defense reports that Ghassan al-Sharbi was born on December 28, 1974, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

He was sent to the United States for high school and later graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona with a degree in electrical engineering.

Al-Sharbi left the United States for Afghanistan in 2000, leaving his wife and daughter behind.

Captured in Faisalabad, Pakistan in March 2002, al-Sharbi was transferred to Guantanamo Bay later that year.

He was captured in March 2002 by Pakistani forces during a raid at Faisalabad, Pakistan.

He was held in Islamabad for two months before being turned over the United States forces.

When he was taken to Bagram Air Base for interrogation in June 2002, he was designated as prisoner #237.

In 2002, al-Sharbi was transferred to the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

According to Chris Mackey, a lead interrogator at the base who wrote a chapter about the Saudi's interrogation in his 2004 memoir, al-Sharbi was designated as prisoner #237 at Bagram.

He spoke fluent English and was considered "dismissive and aloof" by the interrogators.

He offered the names, addresses and phone numbers of several American classmates, professors and landlords who he said would vouch for his having done nothing wrong.

He also stated that he was glad to see the Taliban ruling Afghanistan, quoting statistics that showed a dramatic decrease in crime rates and an increase in new schools built under their government.

Al-Sharbi asked the interrogations chief whether he had read anything by T. E. Lawrence, or From Beirut to Jerusalem. When the interrogator said that he graduated from Fordham University, al-Sharbi said it was a "third-tier school".

The interrogator later remarked that al-Sharbi wanted to assert superiority and had a "seeming preoccupation with death".

When it was arranged to transfer al-Shirbi to Guantanamo, he calmly told his interrogators that "after a while, the truth would blur for him and that he would just say whatever we wanted to hear just to have the solitude that would come from the end of our questioning".

In his testimony before his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, held sometime during late 2004–2005, al-Sharbi accepted the classification as "enemy combatant," as well as all 15 allegations against him.

When he was dismissed from the room, he chanted, "May God help me fight the infidels or the unfaithful ones."

On November 7, 2005, the United States charged al-Sharbi and four other detainees with war crimes.

They were expected to face a trial before a military commission.

Al-Sharbi, Jabran Said bin al Qahtani, Binyam Ahmed Muhammad, and Sufyian Barhoumi faced conspiracy to murder charges for being part of an al-Qaeda bomb-making cell.

Omar Khadr, 18 years old, faced both murder and conspiracy to murder charges.

Al-Sharbi initially wanted to decline legal representation; a pro bono attorney was arranged by the Center for Constitutional Rights and other organizations when the US had not provided any counsel to the detainees.

In 2006, al-Sharbi told a military commission that he was a member of al-Qaeda and proud of his actions against the United States.

In 2006, his pro bono attorney, Bob Rachlin, was trying to arrange for al-Sharbi to talk by phone with his parents, hoping they would persuade him to accept Rachlin's legal assistance, which his father had initiated.

On April 27, 2006, al Sharbi acknowledged membership in al Qaeda before a military commission.

He was alleged to have been part of a bomb-making cell.

According to David Morgan, a Reuters reporter, his comments included the following:

In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), the United States Supreme Court held that the executive branch did not have the authority to set up a separate system of military trials outside the civil and military justice systems, and that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) and military commissions were unconstitutional.

That year, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, authorizing a separate system for prosecuting enemy combatants and responding to Court-identified issues.

The act restricted the detainees from using habeas corpus and federal courts; all pending cases were stayed.

The CIA has acknowledged that Zubaydah is one of three high-value detainees who were interrogated at length under the technique known as "waterboarding", generally considered a form of torture, before the CIA transferred them to military custody in September 2006 at Guantanamo Bay.

Serious war crimes charges were dropped against him in October 2008, as it had been found they were based on evidence gained through torture of Abu Zubaydah.

On May 29, 2008, Ghassan Abdullah Ghazi al-Sharbi, Sufyian Barhoumi and Jabran al-Qahtani were charged separately before military commissions authorized under the 2006 act.

On October 21, 2008, Susan J. Crawford, the official in charge of the Office of Military Commissions, announced that charges were dropped against al-Sharbi and four other detainees: Jabran al Qahtani, Sufyian Barhoumi, Binyam Mohamed, and Noor Uthman Muhammed.

Carol J. Williams, writing in the Los Angeles Times, reported that all five men had been connected to Abu Zubaydah by his testimony.

Al-Sharbi had a habeas corpus petition which his father had initiated on his behalf; when it reached the court in March 2009, al-Sharbi requested that it be dismissed.

He did not want to pursue it.

Al-Sharbi was held at Guantanamo for twenty years.