Abdel Hamid al-Ghazzawi

Abdel Hamid Ibn Abdussalem Ibn Mifta Al Ghizzawi (born 8 November 1962) is a citizen of Libya who was held from June 2002 until March 2010 in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba because the United States classified him as an enemy combatant. His internment number was 654.

His attorney has disputed the determination that al-Ghizzawi was an enemy combatant, which he has denied. She has noted that the first Combatant Status Review Tribunal in November 2004 found no evidence of al-Qaeda involvement and ruled he was not an enemy combatant. Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Abraham later submitted an affidavit to the United States Supreme Court about the flaws in the CSRT process, based in part on this case, for which he sat on the original tribunal.

Early life Abdel Hamid Ibn Abdussalem Ibn Mifta Al Ghizzawi was born in Tripoli, Libya in 1962. He had training at the Ministry of Maritime Transport Trade School and the Abu Sitta Naval Training Center for five to six months in 1979–1980. Together with nearly 250 Libyan recruits, he was sent to the Kamaya Point Training Center in Bataan, Philippines, but the program failed and they returned to Libya.

At the CSRT for al-Ghizzawi, "On 24 November 2004, a ... Tribunal [unanimously] determined, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Detainee #654 was not properly designated as an enemy combatant." She asked to review the CSRT files. Initially she was told the second CSRT had evaluated new, "secret" information as the basis for its revised finding that al-Ghizzawi was an enemy combatant. She had to travel to government offices to review the secret files. She found there was no new information; the second tribunal had simply overturned the conclusions of the first one.

Gorman submitted a habeas corpus petition to the United States Supreme Court on al-Ghizzawi's behalf in August 2006.

Abraham was the first member of a military panel to challenge the conduct of the hearings. He said the panels were strongly pressured to rule that detainees were enemy combatants. His panel resisted pressure to change their determination and continued to find the detainee was not an enemy combatant. He was never asked to sit on another panel. His affidavit is believed to have contributed to the Supreme Court's decision to accept the consolidated cases of Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v. United States for its 2007-2008 docket. It had originally declined to hear this case. In Boumediene v. Bush (2008), the Supreme Court found that detainees had the habeas corpus right for access to federal courts. It found that provisions of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 restricting them to the military system were unconstitutional. In addition, since the CSRTs had been completed in 2005, most detainees were still being held without charges; their cases had not progressed.

Attorneys refiled numerous habeas corpus petitions in federal courts on behalf of detainees to challenge their detention.

Health H. Candace Gorman, Al Ghizzawi's attorney, said that Guantanamo authorities had told her in October 2006 that the detainee had hepatitis B and tuberculosis, the latter contracted at the camp.

On 16 January 2008, Gorman reported on her blog that Al Ghizzawi told her he has AIDS. The Supreme Court denied her request for access to al-Ghizzawi's medical records, after she appealed DOD's denial. DOD has said that privacy restrictions prevent revealing details about an individual detainee's health, but a spokesman at Guantanamo said that no detainee at the camp has been diagnosed with HIV or AIDS.

Detainee reviews Beginning in early 2009, the Obama administration conducted reviews of all detainees held at Guantanamo with the goal of repatriating as many as possible or finding safe places for them, and closing the camps. It has arranged placement for numerous detainees to be released who feared returning to their country of origin. It arranged for Georgia to accept Al Ghizzawi and transferred him there on 23 March 2010.