Bahtiyar Mahnut

Bahtiyar Mahnut (born January 18, 1976) is an Uyghur refugee best known for the seven and a half years he spent in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 277. The Department of Defense reports that Mahnut was born on January 18, 1976, in Ghulja, China.

He won his habeas corpus in 2008. Judge Ricardo Urbina declared his detention as unlawful and ordered to set him free in the United States.

Until his transfer to Switzerland on March 23, 2010 Bahtiyar Mahnut had been confined in the Guantanamo detention camps for more than seven and a half years despite it became clear as early as 2003 that he like the other Uyghurs in Guantanamo were innocent.

Combatant Status Review
Mahnut was among the 60% of prisoners who chose to participate in tribunal hearings. A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for the tribunal of each detainee.

Mahnut's memo accused him of the following:

Transcript
Mahnut participated in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal. His Tribunal convened on 23 October 2004 and 27 October 2004.

On March 3, 2006, in response to a court order from Jed Rakoff the Department of Defense published an eighteen page summarized transcript from his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

Witness requests
According to the study entitled, No-hearing hearings, Mahnut was an example of a captive whose witness rrequests were arbitrarily denied:

Mahnut's two witnesses were Saidullah Khalik and Hajiakbar Abdulghupur.

Personal Representative's comments on ISN 277's Tribunal
Personal Representative were asked if they wanted to comment on their captives' Tribunals. Mahnut's Personal Representative was one of the very few who did comment.

He or she was critical of the President of Tribunal panel 12 for refusing to hear all of his witnesses, and for cutting off the testimony of one of the witnesses they had allowed.

The President justified cutting off the witness based on the assertion that the witnesses were never allowed to make unsolicited comments.

Commander Karen M Gibbs, the military lawyer who provided a legal sufficiency review, noted that the Tribunal President had not offered a justification for refusing to allow the testiomny of Mahnut's witnesses. But, in the end, Commander Gibbs concluded that the witnesses would not have made a difference to the conclusion the Tribunal drew.


 * {| class="wikitable"


 * Bahtiyar Mahnut is a 28-year-old Chinese citizen who is an ethnic Uighur from Ghalga province of China. Mahnut left China in May 2001 with the goal of reaching a western democracy (America) to live a better life.  He  was last interviewed at the end of 2002.  He had disciplinary action on 4 March 2003 for participating in a riot in which he threw water, milk, food, body fluids, and feces on guards. Sabit  [sic] is suspected as being a probable member of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).  He is suspected of having received training in an ETIM training camp in Afghanistan.
 * Bahtiyar Mahnut is a 28-year-old Chinese citizen who is an ethnic Uighur from Ghalga province of China. Mahnut left China in May 2001 with the goal of reaching a western democracy (America) to live a better life.  He  was last interviewed at the end of 2002.  He had disciplinary action on 4 March 2003 for participating in a riot in which he threw water, milk, food, body fluids, and feces on guards. Sabit  [sic] is suspected as being a probable member of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).  He is suspected of having received training in an ETIM training camp in Afghanistan.


 * }

The information paper also identified him as "Sadir Sabit".

Bahtiyar Mahnut v. George W. Bush
A writ of habeas corpus, Bahtiyar Mahnut v. George W. Bush, was submitted on Bahtiyar Mahnut's behalf. In response, on 20 September 2005 the Department of Defense released 39 pages of unclassified documents related to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

He appeared before Tribunal panel 12. His Tribunal President disputed that he had denied Mahnut due process.

Summary of Evidence memo
A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Bahtiyar Mahnut's Administrative Review Board, on 23 August 2005. The memo listed factors for and against his continued detention.

The following primary factors favor continued detention

The following primary factors favor release or transfer

Transcript
Mahnut chose to participate in his Administrative Review Board hearing. In the Spring of 2006, in response to a court order from Jed Rakoff the Department of Defense published a thirteen page summarized transcript from his Administrative Review Board.

Refused to be sent to Palau
The Washington Post reported that Palau had offered him asylum, but had not offered asylum to his brother Arkin Mahmud. According to Del Quentin Wilber, writing in the Washington Post, Arkin developed mental health problems at Guantanamo so serious that he was the only captive not invited to stay in Palau.

According to the Washington Post, Abubakkir Qasim, one of the fellow Uyghurs, who was transferred to Albania in 2006, described the brother's situation as a "difficult and sad."

Arkin had traveled to Afghanistan after younger brother Bahtiyar had phoned from the Uyghur construction camp—a call that left the rest of their family worried about him. They met at the camp, shortly before the 9-11. Although the men were captured in 2001, they were not allowed to see one another in the camp until 2003, when Bahtiyar asked to be moved from the camp for more compliant captives to the camp where Arkin was being held. From 2005 until the remaining Uyghurs were cleared of suspicion in September 2008 Arkin was held in isolation because guards reported infractions of the camp's rules.

Granted asylum in Switzerland
Switzerland granted political asylum to Arkin Mahmud and Bahtiyar Mahnut on February 4, 2010. Swiss authorities helped them settle in Canton of Jura.