Faris Muslim al Ansari

Afghan Guantanamo Bay detainee

Faris Muslim al Ansari is a citizen of Afghanistan who was seventeen years old when captured and held in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 253. American intelligence analysts estimate that Al Ansari was born in 1984 in Mukala, Yemen.

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 competent tribunals 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. Al Ansari chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

The Department of Defense published the dates captives departed from Guantanamo on 26 November 2008. According to that list Faris al Ansari was repatriated on December 28, 2007. On January 9, 2009 the Department of Defense published the records for the third set of Administrative Review Board hearings, conducted in 2007 and early 2008. According to those records no review was scheduled for Al Ansari in 2007. According to the records of the 2005 and 2006 Board hearings, those boards had not recommended his repatriation. Like the nine other men Al Ansari was repatriated in spite of the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants recommending his continued detention in US custody.