Stephen Abraham

Stephen Abraham is an American lawyer and officer in the United States Army Reserve. In June 2007, he became the first officer who had served on a Combatant Status Review Tribunal to publicly criticize its operations. He said the evidence provided did not meet legal standard, and the members of the panels were strongly pressured by superiors to find that detainees should be classified as enemy combatants. He served as an intelligence officer during periods of both reserve and active duty, including mobilization in 1990 ("Operation Desert Storm") and twice again following the 9/11 attacks. He said

He criticized that the CSRTs allowed hearsay evidence, which is not admitted in a court of law. He said it was as if the Guantanamo captives faced "a game of telephone".

Fawzi al-Odah was one of many detainees challenging his detention due to dissatisfaction with the CSRT process. Detainees had not been provided with legal counsel or given the opportunity to challenge any evidence presented by the government, which could include hearsay and secret, classified information not available to detainees. His was one of several cases consolidated under Boumediene v. Bush, which in 2007 was proceeding to the United States Supreme Court to challenge CSRTs, as well as the military commissions as created under the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Abraham's sister had attended a presentation by al-Odah's attorneys about the detainee and the legal issues he and others faced. After she told them that her brother had been a Tribunal officer, they approached Abraham to find out what he thought of the process. Learning of his deep concerns, they asked if he would provide an affidavit.

David Cynamon, one of al-Odah's lawyers, praised Abraham's courage in making the affidavit. He expressed his fears that it was "career suicide" for Abraham. Like Abraham, this second officer, whose name was redacted from the Supreme Court documents, was also a reservist and an attorney in civilian life. He wrote: "training was minimal" -and- "the process was not well defined". Abraham said that most of his work, and that of his colleagues on the Tribunals, was performed in Washington, DC. He traveled to Guantanamo only three times. Abraham said that the allegations in the Summary of Evidence memos were referred to as "evidence", but they did not meet the legal standard for evidence.