Arkin Mahmud

Who is Arkin Mahmud?

Arkin Mahmud is an Uyghur refugee best known for the seven and a half years he spent in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.

Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts reports Mahmud was born on July 1, 1964, in Ghulja, China.

Arkin traveled to Afghanistan in order to look for his younger brother Bahtiyar Mahnut. He is one of approximately twenty-two captives from the Uighur ethnic group. By the summer of 2009 Arkin's mental health had deteriorated so profoundly he wasn't offered sanctuary in Palau. For some time in 2005 during his stay in Guantanamo he was held in solitary confinement.

He won his habeas corpus in 2008. Judge Ricardo Urbina declared his detention as unlawful and ordered to set him free in the United States.

Until his transfer to Switzerland on March 23, 2010 Arkin Mahmud had been held at Guantanamo for more than seven and a half years despite it became clear early on that he like the other Uyghurs in Guantanamo was innocent.