Niam Kuchi is a citizen of
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
who was held in
extrajudicial detention
Administrative detention is arrest and detention of individuals by the state without trial. A number of jurisdictions claim that it is done for security reasons. Many countries claim to use administrative detention as a means to combat terrorism ...
in the United States's
Guantanamo Bay detention camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...
s in
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
.
[
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His Guantanamo
Internment Serial Number An Internment Serial Number (ISN) is an identification number assigned to captives who come under control of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) during armed conflicts.
History
On March 3, 2006, in compliance with a court order from D ...
was 931.
Joint Task Force Guantanamo
Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) is a U.S. military joint task force based at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba on the southeastern end of the base. JTF-GTMO falls under US Southern Command. Since January 2002 the command has ...
estimate that he was born in 1940 in
Logar, Afghanistan
Logar (Pashto/Dari: ; meaning Greater Mountain ( لوې غر)) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan located in the eastern section of the country. It is divided into 7 districts and contains hundreds of villages. Puli Alam is the capital of ...
.
Kuchi is a senior tribal leader within Afghanistan's
Kuchis
Kochis or Kuchis (Pashto: کوچۍ Kuchis) are pastoral nomads belonging primarily to the Ghilji Pashtuns. In the southern, western and northern regions of Afghanistan they are also referred to at times as maldar (Pashto: مالدار maldar ...
ethnic group.
[
During former President ]Burhanuddin Rabbani
Burhānuddīn Rabbānī (Persian: ; 20 September 1940 – 20 September 2011) was an Afghanistani politician and teacher who served as President of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996 (in exile from 1996 to 2001).
Born in the Badakhshan Province, Rab ...
's government (1992–1996), Niam Kuchi became Deputy Minister for Tribal Affairs.
He also became the governor of Bamiyan
Bamyan or Bamyan Valley (); ( prs, بامیان) also spelled Bamiyan or Bamian is the capital of Bamyan Province in central Afghanistan. Its population of approximately 70,000 people makes it the largest city in Hazarajat. Bamyan is at an alti ...
province during Taliban's regime.
The ''Edmonton Sun
The ''Edmonton Sun'' is a daily newspaper and news website published in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It is owned by Postmedia following its 2015 acquisition of Sun Media from Quebecor.
It began publishing Sunday April 2, 1978 and shares many cha ...
'' described him as the Kuchis' "best known leader."[
]
Release
According to medical records published on March 15, 2007, Kuchi's "in-process date" was March 23, 2003.[
]
Records show that Kuchi was 69 inches tall and his weight ranged from 175 pounds when he arrive to 185 pounds. Nine weights were recorded, his weight upon his arrival in March 2003, and a monthly weigh-in from January to August 2004.
Kuchi was repatriated on September 18, 2004, seven weeks after the began convening Combatant Status Review Tribunal
The Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) were a set of tribunals for confirming whether detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had been correctly designated as "enemy combatants". The CSRTs were esta ...
, but no CSR Tribunal was convened to review his status.[
][
]
Dawd Gul
According to the United States Department of Defense, it held more than two hundred Afghan detainees in Guantanamo prior to May 15, 2006.
They had been captured and classified as enemy combatants in warfare following the US and allies' invasion ...
, one of the other nine Afghan captives repatriated that day, had had a CSR Tribunal prior to his repatriation.
McClatchy interview
On June 15, 2008, the McClatchy News Service
The McClatchy Company, commonly referred to as simply McClatchy, is an American publishing company incorporated under Delaware's General Corporation Law and based in Sacramento, California. It operates 29 daily newspapers in fourteen states and ...
published articles based on interviews with 66 former Guantanamo captives. McClatchy reporters interviewed Niam Kuchi.[
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]
He declined—twice—to be interviewed by McClatchy reporters. When reporters showed up at his house, without invitation, he told reporters that he got depressed after speaking about Guantanamo. He also told them he suffered from headaches and hypertension arising from the conditions of his detention.
The McClatchy report states that other sources told them that Kuchi was a senior leader in the Ahmadzai tribe
Aḥmadzai ( ps, احمدزی, "descendants of Aḥmad"; also spelled Ahmedzai) is a Sunni Muslim Pashtun people, Pashtun tribe found in South Waziristan and Bannu District in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. They are a clan ...
,[ which is known as the biggest Pashtun tribe. Thus, many Afghans consider him as the most influential and legitimate Afghan leader.
Since his repatriation, Kuchi has worked with national peace and reconciliation efforts.][
The McClatchy report states that when Americans apprehended him on January 1, 2003, hundreds of members of his tribe came to Kabul to protest. The USA has offered no explanation for his apprehension.
]
References
External links
McClatchy News Service - video
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuchi, Niam
Guantanamo detainees known to have been released
Afghan extrajudicial prisoners of the United States
Living people
1940 births