Salih Uyar

Salih Uyar
Citizenship	Turkish
Detained at	Guantanamo
ISN	298
Charge(s)	no charge, held in extrajudicial detention
Status	no longer enemy combatant, released

Casio F91W, in daily alarm mode. The watch is currently set to ring an alarm, and flash its light, at 7:30am.

Salih Uyar is a citizen of Turkey who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba. His detainee ID number was 298.

Casio watch

When the Department of Defense was forced to comply with US District Court Justice Jed Rakoff's court order to release the documents from the Guantanamo detainees's Combatant Status Review Tribunals Uyar's name came to light.'

One of the reasons he was detained was that he was captured wearing a Casio F91W digital watch.

Uyar asked his Tribunal: "If it's a crime to carry this watch, your own military personnel also carry this watch, too, Does that mean that they're just terrorists as well?"

Combatant Status Review

A. The detainee is associated with al Qaida: The detainee traveled to Afghanistan from Turkey via Iran and Pakistan in 2000. The detainee lived with a known al Qaida member for two months just before the raids began in Kabul. The detainee claims to have lost his passport while traveling by foot across the Pakistani border. The detainee was captured with a Casio watch; a model that has been used in bombings linked to al Qaida and radical Islamic terrorist improvised explosive devices. The detainee stated that he had been in Afghanistan for a period of 14 months, however, he could only account for seven months. The detainee traveled in and out of Turkey multiple times, including multiple trips to Syria under the guise of Arabic language studies. The detainee is a known associate of Turkish radical religious groups.

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

Uyar acknowledged traveling to Afghanistan, and various other countries, as part of an informal independent study program. One of the things he was trying to teach himself was Arabic. He acknowledged losing his passport when he tried to leave Afghanistan on foot, after the US started bombing Afghanistan, and Pakistan closed the border crossings. He acknowledged owning a Casio watch, but he only carried it to tell time. He wasn't aware that terrorists used it to build bombs. He also pointed out that the Guantanamo guards wore the same model, and asked if that made them terrorists. Uyar said he believed he had accounted for all fourteen months he spent in Afghanistan. Uyar denied that the person he had stayed with prior to the US attacks was an al Qaida member.

A Tribunal member asked for further details about his host, and, in particular, his occupation. Uyar said that his host was a refugee from Iran, and, so far as he could tell, he didn't have a job.

Press reports

On July 12, 2006 the magazine Mother Jones provided excerpts from the transcripts of a selection of the Guantanamo detainees. The article informed readers:

More than a dozen detainees were cited for owning cheap digital watches, particularly “the infamous Casio watch of the type used by Al Qaeda members for bomb detonators.”

The article quoted Uyar, and three other watch owners:

"If it is a crime to carry this watch, your own military personnel also carry this watch. Does this mean they’re just terrorists as well?"

Determined not to have been an Enemy Combatant

According to The Washington Post Uyar was one of the detainees who was determined not to have been an "enemy combatant" after all. They report that Uyar has been released.

Habeas corpus

A writ of habeas corpus was filed on his behalf. It was amalgamated with other petitions, and heard by US District Court Judge Reggie Walton, as part of Mohammon v. Bush.

In September 2007 the United States Department of Defense published 179 dossiers in response to captives' habeas petitions. But they did not publish his.