Personal Representative (PRB)

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The Personal Represenatitive is an officer appointed by the Periodic Review Secretariat to learn the story of an individual held in extrajudicial detention whose case was going to be reviewed by a Periodic Review Board. They are not lawyers, and the Periodic Review Boards are "administrative proceedings", not courts of law. The boards' mandate is not to establish guilt or innocence, but rather to make a recommendation about the danger of releasing the individual, based on guessing the danger they might pose, if released.

The captives are warned that their Personal Representative is not allowed to maintain the kind of attorney-client confidentiality a criminal suspect has with their lawyer.

Prior to President Barack Obama's creation of the structure of the Periodic Review Secretariat, and the Periodic Review Boards, in 2011, President George W. Bush's Presidency had created the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants, which oversaw one-time Combatant Status Review Tribunals, and Administrative Review Boards, which were supposed to convene annually. The CSR Tribunals also appointed an officer called the Personal Representative, but that officer's duties were not the same as the Personal Representative appointed by the Periodic Review Secretariat. The annual Administrative Review Boards had an officer called the Assisting Military Officer, whose duties were more like that of the CSRT Personal Representative than the PRT Personal Representative.

According to the accounts of press and human rights observers, unlike the CSR Tribunals, where the Personal Representative was present during the classified portion of the hearing, the PRB Personal Representatives are also shut out, and so can't correct or address misconceptions in the classified allegations about the captives.

In theory, after the officer in charge of the CSR Tribunal signed off on the recommendations of his or her panel, the Personal Representative was invited to offer observations, if they had a concern the panel had drawn the wrong conclusion. However, 179 dossiers prepared for the habeas corpus appeals of the captives were published due to Freedom of Information Act requests, and the Personal Representative sign-off pages from those 179 hearings show almost all of the Personal Representatives simply endorsed the panel's recommendation. It is unlikely the Personal Representatives at the PRBs will be invited to submit their comments of the Board's recommendation.

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