Mustaq Ali Patel

Mustaq Ali Patel
Other names	Haji Muhammed, Hazi Ahmed
Citizenship	France

Mustaq Ali Patel is a citizen of France, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. His detainee ID number is 649.

Patel, Khaled Ben Mustapha, and Ridouane Khalid were the last French citizens held at the base. They were released in March 2005 and placed under formal investigation by a judge in Paris upon their return but Patel was not prosecuted and released.

Patel was born in India, around 1965, presumably the Western province of Gujarat, but has French nationality through his marriage to a Creole woman, Benedicte Acapandie, from Réunion. He was reported to have been an imam at a French mosque on the Indian Ocean island before going to Afghanistan. Some news reports also question his state of mental health at the time of his arrest by U.S. forces in 2001.^{[citation needed]}

Identity

Captive 649 was named inconsistently on official documents Department of Defense published:

• Captive 649 was listed as Mustaq Ali Patel on the list published on April 20, 2006.
• Captive 649 was listed as Haji Muhammed on the list published on May 15, 2006.
• Captive 649 was listed as Hazi Ahmed on a list published on April 17, 2007.

Official status reviews

Originally the Bush Presidency asserted that captives apprehended during the "global war on terror" were not protected by the Geneva Conventions. They asserted these individuals could be held indefinitely, without being charged, or even being told why they were being held. However, in 2004, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Rasul v. Bush that the captives had to be informed why they were being held and had to be given an opportunity to try to refute those allegations.

Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants

Following the Supreme Court's ruling in Rasul v. Bush the Department of Defense set up the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants. Its mandate was to conduct annual reviews where the captives would be informed of the allegations offered to justify their continued detention.

Patel faced N allegations during his 2004 Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

A: The detainee is associated with al Qaida. The Detainee traveled to Afghanistan after 11 September 2001. The Detainee provided false identification upon his capture. A visiting delegation from Saudi Arabia verified that the Detainee was not of the Saudi Nationality. The Detainee even changed his story after his capture. The Detainee was apprehended in Afghanistan.

Patel told his Tribunal he was beaten by his initial captors to force him to falsely claim to be a Saudi. He claimed he had been beaten so badly that his memory and cognitive abilities had never recovered.

Determined not to have been an Enemy Combatant

The Washington Post reports that Patel was one of 38 detainees who was determined not to have been an enemy combatant during his Combatant Status Review Tribunal. They report that Patel has been released. The Department of Defense refers to these men as No Longer Enemy Combatants.

Ahmed v. Bush

A writ of habeas corpus, Ahmed v. Bush (05-cv-0665), was filed on his behalf. On that habeas corpus petition he was identified as "Hazi Ahmed".

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