Maasoum Abdah Mouhammad

Maasoum Abdah Mouhammad, a citizen of Syria, was formerly held in extrajudicial detention in the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.

Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts estimate he was born in 1972, in Al Qameshle, Syria. He is from the Kurdish ethnic group.

Maasoum Abdah Mouhammad was held at Guantanamo for almost eight years until he was released to Bulgaria on May 4, 2010. In 2004 the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being informed of the allegations justifying their detention, and were entitled to try to refute them.

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.

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

Scholars at the Brookings Institution, led by Benjamin Wittes, listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention was justified by certain common allegations:

Maasoum Abdah Mouhammad was listed as one of the captives who "The military alleges ... are members of the Taliban."

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. His 14-page Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment was drafted on April 5, 2008. It was signed by camp commandant Rear Admiral Mark Buzby, who recommended continued detention.

Asylum in Canada On February 10, 2009, CBC News reported that Maassoum Abdah Mouhammad was the fifth Guantanamo captive to attract a refugee-sponsoring group, in Canada. The other four men were Djamel Ameziane, who had lived in Canada prior to traveling to Afghanistan, and Hassan Anvar and two other Uyghur captives from Guantanamo.

Asylum in Bulgaria

Reuters reported that Bulgaria was negotiating accepting former Guantanamo captives in December 2009. On May 19, 2010, historian Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files, reported that the Syrian transferred to Bulgaria was Maasoum. Worthington was told by local journalists that Maasoum's family had been allowed to join him in Bulgaria. Worthington's conclusion was that Maasoum and three other Syrians captured with him were probably told their interrogators the truth about being in Afghanistan as economic migrants, not jihadists.

Local reporters asserted that Maasoum said that he had gone to Afghanistan to find a wife, that he was not a fighter, and that his detention was due to being mistaken for another man, named Bilal.