Shawali Khan

Shawali Khan is a citizen of Afghanistan, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number is 899. American intelligence analysts estimate he was born in 1963, in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

US District Court Judge John D. Bates, who has reviewed Shawali's confidential file, wrote that all the allegations he faced were based on “multiple levels of hearsay”, that “all of the information contained in the reports could come from a single individual” and that “no source is identified by name.” Shahwali Khan's lawyer Leonard C. Goodman, who has reviewed Shawali's confidential file says he was simply a merchant, denounced for a bounty.

Shawali arrived at Guantanamo on February 7, 2003, and was repatriated on December 20, 2014.

Official status reviews

Originally the Bush Presidency asserted that captives apprehended in the "war on terror" were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, and could be held indefinitely, without charge, and without an open and transparent review of the justifications for their detention. In 2004 the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being informed of the allegations justifying their detention, and were entitled to try to refute them.