Barre v. Gates

Synopsis

Barre v. Gates is a Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) petition filed on behalf of a Somali detainee at Guantánamo who is an official UNHCR refugee.

Status

On August 1, 2007, CCR attorneys filed a Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) petition on behalf of Mr. Barre, a Somali man who holds refugee status granted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Description

Barre v. Gates is a Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) petition filed on behalf of Somali detainee Mohammed Sulaymon Barre.

The petition challenges his designation as an enemy combatant and includes the demand that the U.S. government provide access to critical information and allow CCR attorneys to visit their client. The DTA petition states that Mohammed Sulaymon Barre was abused by U.S. personnel at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, that he has never been a threat to the U.S., and that the military violated its own rules in conducting his Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) to determine whether he is an enemy combatant.

His case represents the intersection of many key issues surrounding the fate of the Guantánamo detainees: faulty hearing processes, the danger faced by many who may be returned to torture in their home countries, and the complicated path their cases must follow through the courts. Mohammed Sulaymon Barre is a Somali citizen who fled Somalia during the civil war in the early 1990s. With the help of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Mohammed obtained asylum in Pakistan. There Mr. Barre worked for a large international money transfer company, and his work phone number appeared on a list of calls made by members of a suspect charitable organization, Al Wafaa. Because of that, on November 1, 2001, Pakistani officials took him into custody and imprisoned him for four months, during which he was interrogated by U.S. officials at least three times. Then transferred by Pakistani officials to the custody of U.S. forces, he was sent to Bagram, where he suffered prolonged abuse, according to testimony he gave during his CSRT hearing, and eventually shipped to Guantánamo.

Barre is the son-in-law of another Somali Guantanamo detainee and UNHCR refugee, Muhamad Hussein Abdallah.

Timeline

On August 1, 2007, CCR attorneys filed a Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) petition on behalf of Mr. Barre, a Somali man who holds refugee status granted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The petition challenges his designation as an enemy combatant and includes the demand that the U.S. government provide access to critical information and allow CCR attorneys to visit their client.