Sabar Lal Melma

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a trailer the size of a large RV. The captive sat on a plastic garden chair, with his hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor.[3][4] Three chairs were reserved for members of the press, but only 37 of the 574 Tribunals were observed.[5]

Initially the Bush administration asserted that they could withhold all the protections of the Geneva Conventions to captives from the war on terror. This policy was challenged before the Judicial branch. Critics argued that the USA could not evade its obligation to conduct a competent tribunal to determine whether captives are, or are not, entitled to the protections of prisoner of war status.

Subsequently the Department of Defense instituted the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The Tribunals, however, were not authorized to determine whether the captives were lawful combatants—rather they were merely empowered to make a recommendation as to whether the captive had previously been correctly determined to match the Bush administration's definition of an enemy combatant.

Sabar Lal Melma chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.[6]

Detainees who were determined to have been properly classified as "enemy combatants" were scheduled to have their dossier reviewed at annual Administrative Review Board hearings. The Administrative Review Boards weren't authorized to review whether a detainee qualified for POW status, and they weren't authorized to review whether a detainee should have been classified as an "enemy combatant".

They were authorized to consider whether a detainee should continue to be detained by the United States, because they continued to pose a threat—or whether they could safely be repatriated to the custody of their home country, or whether they could be set free.

Sabar Lal Melma chose to participate in his Administrative Review Board hearing.[7]

Sabar Lal Melma was repatriated on September 28, 2007, along with five other Afghans, a Libyan captive and a Yemeni captive.[8]

The Center for Constitutional Rights reports that all of the Afghans repatriated to Afghanistan from April 2007 were sent to Afghan custody in the American built and supervised wing of the Pul-e-Charkhi prison near Kabul.[9]

On June 15, 2008 the McClatchy News Service published articles based on interviews with 66 former Guantanamo captives. McClatchy reporters interviewed Sabar Lal. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Sabar Lal said he had been an anti-Taliban fighter during their administration, that he suffered a gunshot wound during his opposition to the Taliban, and that he had helped oust the Taliban during the American invasion.

Lal reported being subjected to sleep deprivation in Bagram.[16]

The McClatchy report quoted an Afghan official named Mohammed Roze, who acknowledged Lal had served as the commander of a border patrol, but that he nevertheless belonged in Guantanamo, because he had bombarded settlements full of civilians during regional disputes.[16] The report quoted Mateullah Khan, the chief of police of Konar Province who asserted Sabar Lal had helped militants escape.

But the report also quoted Jonathan Horowitz, an investigator with a human rights group, who had secured access to Lal's confidential file.[16] He said it contained practically no evidence to back up the allegations against him.

Sabar was killed by Afghan and NATO security forces in Kabul, Afghanistan on 9/3/11.[17] As of September 4, 2011 Sabar Lal Melma could no longer be located on the McClatchy Guantanamo Inmate Database.

NATO officials reported that an individual named Sabar Lal Melma was shot dead during a night raid on his home in Jalalabad on September 3, 2011.[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] According to those officials he emerged from his home carrying an AK-47. The officials went on to say Mr. Lal Melma had been organizing attacks and financing al Qaeda operations.[24] However, in a CNN interview with Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil, a tribal leader who had been captured with Sabar in 2002, Mr. Wakil asserted Lal Melma "chose a civilian life" after his release from Guantanamo.[25]

Ray Riviera, writing in the New York Times on September 4, 2011, reported that Sabar's killing came just two days after coalition forces had promised the Afghanistan High Peace Council that they would quit harassing him.[2] Riviera reported that Sabar had been apprehended by NATO forces as recently as one month earlier. However NATO forces denied both promising to stop harassing Sabar, or that they had recently taken him into custody. Riviera of the New York Times quoted Haji Deen Muhammad of the Peace Council about how the killing of Sabar would affect efforts to get members of the Taliban to defect.

"It really hurts the prestige of the Peace Council among the people of Afghanistan. More importantly, those Taliban members who were released through our process are going to have big concerns that this will happen to them."

In September 2011, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) issued a press release stating they had knowledge that Lal Melma was "in contact with several senior al Qaeda members throughout Kunar and Pakistan" [17]

• McClatchy News Service - video
• Tom Lasseter (June 15, 2008). "Guantanamo Inmate Database: Sabar Lal". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on September 20, 2008. Retrieved 2008-06-16.
• The Anonymous Victims Of Guantánamo: Eight More Wrongly Imprisoned Men Are Quietly Released Andy Worthington