Ali Abdullah Ahmed

Ali Abdullah Ahmed, also known as Salah Ahmed al-Salami (Arabic: علي عبدالله احمد) (August 1, 1979 – June 10, 2006), was a citizen of Yemen who died whilst being held as an enemy combatant in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 693. Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terror analysts estimated he was born in 1977, in Ibb, Yemen.

Ali Abdullah Ahmed died in custody on June 10, 2006. His death was announced by the Department of Defense as a suicide, on the same day that the deaths of two other detainees were said to be suicides. The three deaths on the same day received wide coverage in the media.

His younger brother, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, also known as Yasir al-Simli, was also held in Guantanamo, until 2009. He was killed by a missile, launched from a drone, on March 2, 2017. DOD spokesmen refrained from releasing the names of the dead men.

The next day, June 11, 2006, Saudi Arabian authorities released the names of the two Saudi men. Later that day, the DOD released the names of all three men. The dead Yemeni man was identified by DOD for the first time as Ali Abdullah Ahmed. The dead Saudis were identified as Yasser Talal Al Zahrani and Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi.

Official account At the time, The Washington Post'''' reported that DOD alleged Ahmed: "was a mid- to high-level al-Qaeda operative who had key ties to principal facilitators and senior members of the group.'"—and that "Throughout his time in Guantanamo, he had been non-compliant and hostile to the guard force". On June 14, 2006, DOD acknowledged that Ahmed had legal representation. But they had not yet given his lawyers the security clearance required to visit with him.

Ali Abdullah Ahmed and Yasser Talal Al Zahrani had previously been listed on DOD's two official lists of detainees. The other Saudi was previously recorded as either "Maniy bin Shaman al-Otaibi" or "Mani bin Shaman bin Turki al Habradi", and had not appeared on either official list.

Murder suggestions On June 14, 2006, Ali Abdullah Ahmed's father claimed that, as a Muslim, his son would not have committed suicide. The father alleged that his son was "assassinated by American soldiers".

Post-mortems All three of the families of the dead men challenged the American post-mortems. The families all took steps to have second post-mortems done after the bodies were returned to them.

Some family members had expressed concerns when the bodies were missing the brain, liver, kidney, heart and other organs. Patrice Mangin, the Swiss pathologist who headed the team that volunteered to examine Al Salami's body, said that it was routine to remove some organs that decay rapidly.

Habeas corpus In 2005, attorneys had initiated a habeas corpus petition on behalf of Ali Abdullah Ahmed to challenge the government for the cause of his detention. Following the United States Supreme Court's finding in Boumediene v. Bush (2008), ruling that detainees and foreign nationals had the right of habeas corpus to sue in federal court, Ahmed's former attorneys re-initiated his habeas petition. They argued that the Department of Defense had withheld important information about Ahmed to substantiate its claim that he committed suicide.

They also filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of Mohammed Ahmed Taher, on July 18, 2008, who they reported is the younger brother of the Yemeni captive identified by DOD as Salah al-Salami, or as Ali Abdullah Ahmed. In December 2009, the Obama administration argued that the petitions of the late detainees should be quashed, because their CSRTs had determined that they were "enemy combatants".

Talal al-Zahrani's father countered: "It doesn't really matter if this was an intentional death or an accidental death or suicide. The point is that the U.S. government bears responsibility." It is available online at Death in Camp Delta.

On January 18, 2010, Scott Horton of Harper’s Magazine published an article denouncing the deaths of Al-Salami, Al-Utaybi and Al-Zahrani as accidental manslaughter during a torture session at a black site, and the official account as a cover-up. He based his work on the accounts of four soldiers who had been serving at the camp at the time.