Background
The Department of Defense reports that Abdulayev was born on October 11, 1978, in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
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Omar Abdulayev
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Career
He arrived at Guantanamo on February 9, 2002, and has been held there for 14 years, 1 month and 18 days. According to a profile in the Miami Herald he fled civil war in Tajikistan in 1991, when he was just 13 years old. Carol Rosenberg wrote that reviewing his files indicates he was a cooperative captive, who did not participate in the widespread hunger strikes, and that, unlike other captives, he participated in all his annual status reviews.
In 2009, the Obama government decided they would no longer claim Omar was an enemy combatant.
Omar is one of the Guantanamo captives who, even though they have been cleared for release, would rather stay in Guantanamo, than be repatriated, to his home country, because he fears torture. Abdulayev had a writ of habeas corpus filed on his behalf.
lieutenant was amalgamated with several dozen other captives, in 05-CV-2386 before United States District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton. On 29 December 2008 Allison M. Lefrak filed protected information, under seal, on his behalf.
Carol Rosenberg, writing in the Miami Herald, reports that Umar Abdulayev fears being repatriated to Tajikistan, and wants to remain in Guantanamo.
Quoting Abdulayev"s lawyer Matthew J. O"Hara, Rosenberg reported Abdulayev was a refugee who had fled Tajikistan to Afghanistan when he was thirteen years old. She reported that the Tajikistani security officials threatened retribution when he declined to serve as a spy. Abdulayev"s lawyer, Matthew J. O"Hara, during a November 2009 interview on National Public Radio, that among the reasons Abdulayev fears repatriation to Tajikistan is that the family he left behind in a Pakistani refugee camp has disappeared.
All efforts to contact them, following his 2001 capture, had failed.
O"Hara said Abdulayev"s father died in 1994, attempting to return to Tajikistan. O"Hara said two of the other Tajikistanis received long prison terms following their repatriation.
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Department of Justice officials told United States. District Court Judge Reggie Walton on June 3, 2009 that they would no longer try to defend classifying him an enemy combatant.
