Released February 2016
Morrocco ISN 197 | Citizenship Moroccan | |
Born April 5, 1968 (age 49)
Asafi, Morocco ( 1968-04-05 ) Alternate name Ahmad Abdullah al Wazan
Younous Chekkouri
Younis Chekkouri
Yunnus Shokuri
Younis Shakur
Yuunis Shokuri Status Was held in extrajudicial detention in Guantanamo for over thirteen years Detained at Guantanamo Bay detention camp | ||
Yunis Abdurrahman Shokuri or Shekkouri (Arabic: يونس عبد الرحمن الشقوري) is a citizen of Morocco who was held in extrajudicial detention in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. The Department of Defense reports his date of birth as April 5, 1968. The Department of Defense reports that he was born in Safi, Morocco.
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Shokuri was repatriated to Morocco, in spite of its human rights record, when US State Department officials asserted they had diplomatic assurances that he would not be incarcerated in Morocco, after his return. In fact he was held, without charge, for a further six months. The New York Times reports that, after he was finally free, he denounced the Islamic State and other radical fundamentalist Muslim militants.
Press reports
On July 12, 2006 the magazine Mother Jones provided excerpts from the transcripts of a selection of the Guantanamo detainees. Shokuri was one of the detainees profiled. According to the article his transcript contained the following comment:
[T]he only way I know the United States is through movies from Hollywood or through cartoons. I’m a big fan of a lot of their singers…. [T]he first time I saw an American soldier was at Kandahar Air Base…. When I first saw myself in Kandahar, it was like I was in a cinema or a movie. I saw a 1996 movie called The Siege. The movie was about terrorists carrying out terrorist attacks in the United States…. [In the movie] the CIA and FBI were not successful in finding that terrorist group and the United States Army interfered and gathered all the people of Arabic descent and put them in a land cage or camp just like it happened in Kandahar. I was shocked, thinking, “Am I in that movie or on a stage in Hollywood?”… Sometimes I laugh at myself and say, “When does that movie end?”In 2015 alarmists quoted reports, from the prison, that some of the individuals remaining in Guantanamo were closing following the attacks of ISIS, to justify their continued detention. After he was finally freed from Iraqi captivity, when Shokuri denounced ISIS, he explained that he, and the other remaining individuals, followed ISIS's attacks simply because they were so disturbed by the atrocities it was committing under its distorted vision of Islam.
Habeas corpus petition
Shokuri had a writ of habeas corpus filed on his behalf.
On 15 July 2008 Jan K. Kitchel filed a "PETITIONER'S REQUEST FOR 30-DAY NOTICE OF REMOVAL OR TRASFER" on Shokuri's behalf in Civil Action No. CV 05-0329 (HHK). The petition would prevent the Department of Defense from transferring him out of US jurisdiction without giving his attorney's thirty days notice. The Department of Defense had transferred some captives to countries where they were subsequently subjected to abusive treatment—even though they had active habeas corpus petitions.