Combatant Status Review Tribunal Process
- A. Organization
Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) will be administered by the Director, Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The Director will staff and structure the Tribunal organization to facilitate its operation. The CSRT staff will schedule Tribunal proceedings, provide for interpreter services, provide legal advice to the Director and to Tribunal panels, provide clerical assistance and other administrative support, ensure information security, and coordinate with other agencies as appropriate.
- B. Purpose and Function
This process will provide a non-adversarial proceeding to determine whether each detainee in the control of the Department of Defense at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, meets the criteria to be designated as an enemy combatant, defined in reference (a) as follows:
- An “enemy combatant” for purposes of this order shall mean an individual who was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaida forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. This includes any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported hostilities in aid of enemy armed forces.
Each detainee whose status will be reviewed by a tribunal has previously been determined, since capture, to be an enemy combatant through multiple levels of review by military officers and officials of the Department of Defense
The Director, CSRT, shall convene Tribunals pursuant to this implementing directive to conduct such proceedings as necessary to make a written assessment as to each detainee’s status as an enemy combatant. Each Tribunal shall determine whether the preponderance of the evidence supports the conclusion that each detainee meets the criteria to be designated as an enemy combatant.
Adoption of the procedures outlined in this directive is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities or entities, its officers, employees or agents, or any other person
- C. Combatant Status Review Tribunal Structure
- Each Tribunal shall be composed of a panel of three neutral commissioned officers of the U. S. Armed Forces convened to make determinations of enemy combatant status pursuant to this implementing directive. Each of the officers shall possess the appropriate security clearance and none of the officers appointed shall have been involved in the apprehension, detention, interrogation, or previous determination of status of the detainees other than the CSRT process. The senior members of each Tribunal shall be an officer serving in the grade of O-6 and shall be its President. The other members of the Tribunal shall be officers in the grade of O-4 and above. One of
