Yussef al-Shihri

Saudi Arabian Guantanamo Bay detainee (1985–2009)

Yussef Mohammed Mubarak al Shihri (1985–2009) was a citizen of Saudi Arabia who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. He was born on September 8, 1985, in Riyadh Saudi Arabia. At the age of sixteen, he was captured along with his older cousin as part of a large group of 120 soldiers near Kunduz, and transferred to Shiberghan prison for six weeks, before being flown to Guantanamo on January 16, 2002. On June 15, 2005, human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith identified al Shihri as one of a dozen teenage boys held in the adult portion of the prison. According to Smith, al Shihri was 13 years old when captured. Smith observed that official US documents referred to this dozen minors solely by their initials, because US law prohibits identifying minors. Official documents referred to Al Shihri as "YAS". An October 2009 article in the Saudi Gazette asserts his older brother Saad Muhammad Al Shehri took him to Afghanistan after he finished "intermediate school". Yussef Al Shehri passed through the Saudi militant rehabilitation program following his repatriation from Guantanamo. He was named on Saudi Arabia's list of most wanted terrorist suspects on February 3, 2009. He was killed in a shootout with Saudi police, while apparently preparing to commit a suicide attack wearing an explosive belt on October 18, 2009.

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for the tribunal, listing the allegations that led to his detainment. His memo accused him of the following:

Detainees whose Combatant Status Review Tribunal labeled them "enemy combatants" were scheduled for annual Administrative Review Board hearings. These hearings were designed to assess the threat a detainee might pose if released or transferred, and whether there were other factors that warranted his continued detention.

On November 25, 2008, the Department of Defense published a list of when captives left Guantanamo. According to that list he was repatriated to Saudi custody on November 9, 2007, with thirteen other men. The records published from the captives' annual Administrative Reviews show his repatriation was not the outcome of the formal internal review procedures. The records show his detention was not reviewed in 2007. At least ten other men in his release group were not repatriated through the formal review procedure. He wrote that the BBC's research had found this batch to be a problematic cohort, and that four other men from this batch were named on the Saudi most wanted list.

After another former Saudi captive, Sa'id Ali Jabir Al Khathim Al Shihri, appeared in internet videos that threatened further attacks, an article in the Saudi Gazette reported that he had a brother in law, named "Yusuf al Shihri", who was also a former Guantanamo captive. Said Ali Al Shihri married Yussef Al Shiri's sister after their repatriation from Guantanamo. Yussef's sister had two previous husbands. In a child custody dispute her first husband sought custody claiming the sister was a takfiri. He claimed her second husband had also been a militant, and that he was killed in a shootout with security officials in 2004. During his CSR Tribunal, the allegations stated Yussef Mohammed Mubarak al Shihri was captured with his cousin, in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan.

Al Shihri, Raed al Harbi, and a third man were killed at a border crossing while trying to enter Saudi Arabia from Yemen. The Associated Press reports the men were in possession of suicide belts when discovered. Al Shihri and al Harbi were disguised in women's clothes when discovered. The three resisted arrest and one Saudi soldier was killed and another wounded. The third man, who was not in disguise, survived the firefight. His interrogation led to the capture of six Yemeni accomplices. Saudi security officials reported on the arrest of 113 suspects in March 2010. The arrest of 101 of those individuals were reported to have started with the interrogation of al Shiri's surviving companion.