Tariq Mahmud Ahmad Muhammad al-Sawah (born November 2, 1957) is a citizen of Egypt who was held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba, from May 2002 to January 2016.

[5][6][7] According to the Egypt Independent, formerly secret documents, drafted by Joint Task Force Guantanamo, and published by the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks in 2011, contradicted the charges al-Sawah had faced.

However, the FBI found that claims of al Sawah's explosive expertise were the result of novice military interrogators jumping to improper conclusions.

[14] The Washington Post reported that al-Sawah and Mohamedou Ould Slahi were held in a separate compound, where they were extended extra privileges, as they had both chosen to cooperate with intelligence officials.

[6] Originally the Bush Presidency asserted that captives apprehended in the "war on terror" were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, and could be held indefinitely, without charge, and without an open and transparent review of the justifications for their detention.

[17] Scholars at the Brookings Institution, led by Benjamin Wittes, listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention was justified by certain common allegations:[18] However, al Sawah has long denied that he was ever a member of Al Qaeda, that he traveled to Afghanistan for jihad, that he took part in terrorist training, that he was hostile towards the United States, or that he fought on behalf of Al-Qaeda.

When it reported back, a year later, the Joint Review Task Force classified some individuals as too dangerous to be transferred from Guantanamo, even though there was no evidence to justify laying charges against them.

[29] On December 16, 2008 Carol Rosenberg, writing in the Miami Herald, reported that the Guantanamo military commission prosecutors announced charges had been laid against Tariq al-Sawah.