Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Muhammad Jayid Hadi Al-Subai'i

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep --JForget 23:11, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Muhammad Jayid Hadi Al-Subai'i[edit]

Non-notable Gitmo detainee BradV 01:48, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep: I think there may be a case for each detainee to be considered individually notable as there is official reference material (albeit redacted to the point of incomprehensibility) concerning each individual detainee. Guantanamo Bay is one of the most important and controversial detention facilities in the World. Every person in it is claimed to be a significant terrorist threat. That seems like the US Government making a claim of individual notability for each detainee and I think that makes them notable. --DanielRigal (talk) 02:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep, this isn't even one of the "questionable" Detainee articles in my mind. I see strong Verifiability in its many references, and I see third-party media mentions establishing Notability. We have an article on David Milgaard, why wouldn't we have one on al-Subaii? Both were accused of capital crimes and held in prison, and were ultimately found to be innocent. Sherurcij ^{(speaker for the dead)} 02:08, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment, I'm not sure comparing to David Milgaard is fair. He's highly notable simply because of the massive amount of media coverage he has received over the last 40 years, I get 366 hits for "David Milgaard" at cbc.ca compared to 0 for "Muhammad Jayid Hadi Al-Subai'i" . Most Canadians are well aware of who he is. But that doesn't reduce the case of Muhammad Jayid Hadi Al-Subai'i. Are there media articles discussing the case of Muhammad Jayid Hadi Al-Subai'i? Nfitz (talk) 02:35, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - the article seems biased against the United States' approach to dealing with the Guantanamo Bay 'detainees'. However, this individual seems very notable. We have people on Wikipedia who have been convicted of far less than what this man is accused of, who have received far less media attention, far less political attention, etc. - Richard Cavell (talk) 04:37, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Passes WP:N. Ecoleetage (talk) 04:39, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep — Either the vacuousness of the nomination or the strength of the article would be enough to decide to Keep. Put them together, and it's a Strong Keep, maybe even a Snowball Keep. A nominator who couldn't be bothered to make their case beyond making an unsupported assertion shouldn't expect the rest of the community to give the nomination any more weight than they did. The article, however, could stand to be re-formed into a more impartial version of itself. --SSBohio 18:08, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What specifically do you find notable about this guy? How is the article not a complete violation of WP:BLP1E? Specifically this part: "If reliable sources only cover the person in the context of a particular event, then a separate biography is unlikely to be warranted." BradV 19:15, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some previous AfDs for articles similar to this one:

Perhaps you will read them and reconsider (or at least rephrase) your !vote. BradV 19:29, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Charles Whitman is only notable for one event, Ziad Jarrah is only notable for one event - people consistently misread BLP1E to try and delete valid articles. Its wording is meant to prevent there being articles about "the guy whose truck ran over Paris Hilton's dog" or "the woman who killed her husband in Illinois last week". Sherurcij ^{(speaker for the dead)} 19:33, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For both of those articles there are reliable sources that cover more than just that event. As an example, both of them have an "Early life" section. Can we do that for Muhammad Jayid Hadi Al-Subai'i? BradV 19:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As I see it, detention is Guantanamo is not a single event. It is a long process and part of a larger story that encompasses what the detainee may or may not of done to justify their detention, the manner of their detention and the legal and quasi-legal processes that leads to their release or ongoing detention. After release there is the question of where they are sent to and what happens to them. We are happy to have articles for many hundreds of sportspeople and minor politicians. I think that articles for the detainees would be justifiable if the sources exist to substantiate them. --DanielRigal (talk) 20:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The article doesn't present any reliable sources, a basic prerequisite for any article. The US Government is neither reliable nor secondary as required by WP:RS. Assuming that reliable sources will be found, which would validate even having this discussion, he is unnotable per WP:BLP1E. He hasn't received any media coverage before he was detained and there's no reason to assume that he'll receive coverage in his life outside of being detained. wp:blp1e was intended for just this case, where a simple unnotable person (among 700 others) is a pawn in an important issue. --brew crewer (yada, yada) 20:24, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That is an interesting point. On the one hand the US government is the organisation holding the detainees and almost all of the information we have about them is sourced through the US government. However it is widely accepted that government agencies are RS. If they were not then vast numbers of articles would be left effectively unsourced. How can we resolve this? In my view it is a mistake to regard a government as a single source of information. A government consists of many agencies and releases many types of information and propaganda. A distinction has to be drawn between hard, reliable information like court transcripts, official statistics and budgets all the way through spun information to the often self serving and unreliable statements that politicians make. Although heavily redacted, I think the sources here fall on the reliable end of this continuum and are RS enough to use. --DanielRigal (talk) 20:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the US Government can be used as a reliable source, but no way for this. They can be trusted to say that there are 254 inhabitants in so-and-so village, because they don't really have a strong incentive to lie. In this case, they are the party charging Muhammad Jayid Hadi Al-Subai'i with the crimes, so there's no way they can be relied on. Assuming arguendo that they are reliable, they aren't secondary, which is another prerequisite. --brew crewer (yada, yada) 20:59, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have been thinking about this and I think that we are both right on this in different ways. Surely we can treat solid factual information from the US government saying that "[person] was detained on [date]" or "[person] was brought before a tribunal on [date] and the result was [whatever]" as RS and make a distinction between that sort of information and "[person] is a dangerous terrorist because of [a list of disputed and/or uncorroborated allegations]", which is clearly not RS. It seems to me that the US government has many agencies speaking with multiple voices, some of which can be considered as reliable secondary sources even when talking about the government's own actions. I do understand why this makes people uncomfortable, and I agree that we need to be very cautious, but I think this is acceptable in principle. --DanielRigal (talk) 12:30, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with most of what you said, and that exactly is the reason for my !vote. The heart of the article, and this person's claim to notability, are his criminal acts. Without the criminal acts we have nothing. So we have an article here about a living person that is being accused of heinous acts and the source that we are using for these "facts" are unreliable. Anybody who has been following the news lately, knows that the US government, in regard to Guantanomo Bay, had no trustworthiness. What we have here is an attack article on an unnotbale person all based on an untrustworthy source. A blatant violation of WP:BIO, WP:BLP, and WP:BLP1E. --brew crewer (yada, yada) 13:27, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In my (limited) experience with the families and legal representatives of Guantanamo detainees, I have never heard anything negative about the detainee's "right to privacy", rather they seem insistent on getting the detainee's story "out there", including what he has been charged with. A system can appear rigged, but that does not mean that an article should not exist about people it accuses, if Gaddafi, Musharaf or Putin had alleged that al-Subai'i had been an assassin sent to kill them - as unlikely as their story would be, we would still have an article on him. If the United States claims he is "the worst of the worst" terrorists, then it may or may not be true - but the article should exist and fairly delineate any known facts about him. Sherurcij ^{(speaker for the dead)} 15:09, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The analogy is incorrect. If a person is accused by a Prime Minister of being an assassin out to kill him, it is guaranteed that multiple reliable sources will report on that person. However, one person that is part of an 800-person of so-called bad terrorists is not guaranteed to have received substantial coverage in reliable sources. In addition, a Prime Minister-assassin has long-term notability as not to be violative of WP:BLP1E. However, every person in a 800-person group does not have long-term notability beyond a WP:BLP1E. As for your personal knowledge of certain detainees that do want a Wikipedia article, unfortunately, that cannot be taken into consideration. This afd has precedential value to articles about other detainees. Admittedly, some of the detainees might want a Wikipedia article about them to get the "word out there", but there are some that just want to do their time and then go quietly home. They are not interested in having their so-called terrorist activities memorialized permanently in an encyclopedia. They were not notable prior to the accusations, they aren't notable now, and they won't be notable after the issue is settled. --brew crewer (yada, yada) 15:39, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Guantanamo Bay detainment camp-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 23:04, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.