Mohammed Omar (child detainee)
Mohammed Omar is a citizen of Pakistan who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 540. JTF-GTMO analysts estimate he was born in 1986 in Larkana, Pakistan.
Release
Mohammed Omar was one of the 201 captives who were released or repatriated prior to having their "enemy combatant status" confirmed by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal.
McClatchy interview
On June 15, 2008 the McClatchy News Service published articles based on InterViews with 66 former Guantanamo captives. McClatchy reporters interviewed Mohammed Omar was a madrassa student.
The McClatchy reporter was extremely skeptical of the rest of Mohammed Omar's story, and to that of another minor, also captured in Herat, on the opposite side of Afghanistan. According to the McClatchy reporter:
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- The Two denied going to Afghanistan together or even being arrested together, but it seems highly unlikely that a boy from the Pakistani province of Sindh (Omar) and a boy from Punjab (Rahman) coincidentally ended up together in a western Afghan province in the middle of a war with equally flimsy stories.
- In separate interviews, they each said they were held at Herat's central jail for three months, then transferred to American forces at Kandahar Airfield for five to six months before they were flown to Guantanamo.
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The McClatchy reporter stated that Mohammed Omar told him that his father had forced him to attend a Pakistani madrassa in Shahdadkot, Pakistan, Shahdadkot, Pakistan, and he decided to run away. He said an older man at the madrassa had told him he could get him into an acting academy, an offer that 17 years old, and a big fan of Bollywood films, he found attractive. However, once he left the madrassa his companion and some associates pushed him into a car, and he was taken to Herat, against his will.