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Binyam Mohamed

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Binyam Mohamed
Detained at Guantanamo (-2009)
Other name(s) Benjamin Mohammed,
Benyam (Ahmed) Mohammed,
Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi
ISN1458
StatusCharged before a Guantanamo military commission; although the charges were later dropped, his detention continued

Binyam Ahmed Mohamed (Template:Lang-am) (Template:Lang-ar) (also described as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam (Ahmed) Mohammed and Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi) (born 24 July 1978) is an Ethiopian national who was detained in Guantanamo Bay prison between 2004 and 2009.[1] He was captured and transported under the US extraordinary rendition program. After charges against him were dropped, he was eventually released and arrived in the United Kingdom on 23 February 2009. Mohamed admitted while he was detained that he trained in the Al-Qaeda terrorist training camp Al Farouq,[2] but has since claimed that the evidence against him was obtained using torture.[3] As of November 2009, Mohamed has still not been repatriated.


Background

Binyam Mohamed has claimed to have been tortured in US custody, and tortured while in nominally Moroccan custody.[4] He was alleged to have played a role in what American counter-terrorism analysts characterized as a "dirty bomb plot" with Jose Padilla, despite the fact that it became clear, almost from the moment that Binyam was seized, that the plot never existed. In June 2002, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy to US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, admitted that "there was not an actual plan" to set off a radioactive device in America, that Padilla had not begun trying to acquire materials, and that intelligence officials had stated that his research had not gone beyond surfing the internet.

Detention before being charged

In 1994, Mohamed sought asylum in the United Kingdom.

In June 2001, Mohamed travelled to Afghanistan. The reasons for the trip are in dispute. British and U.S. authorities contend, and the US Military-appointed Personal Representative's Initial Interview notes state, that Mohamed admitted to receiving paramilitary training in the al Farouq training camp.[5] Mohamed's supporters contend that he had gone to conquer his drug problems and to see Muslim countries "with his own eyes". On 10 April 2002, Mohamed was arrested at Pakistan's Karachi airport while attempting to fly to the UK using a false passport by Pakistani authorities as a suspected terrorist. Mohamed contends that he was a subject of the United States extraordinary rendition policy, and entered a "ghost prison system" run by US intelligence agents.[6]

Before his transfer to Guantánamo Bay, Mohamed states that he was incarcerated in prisons in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, and that while in Morocco, interrogators tortured him by using scalpels or razor blades to repeatedly cut his penis and chest.[7]

Mohamed was taken from Bagram airbase to Guantánamo Bay on 19 September 2004. He says that since then he has been "routinely humiliated and abused and constantly lied to". In February 2005 he was placed in Camp V, the harsh "super-maximum" style facility where, reports suggest, "uncooperative" detainees are held. He was told that he would be required to testify against other detainees.

Mohamed's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, said that Mohamed participated in recent hunger strikes to protest against the harsh conditions and lack of access to any judicial review.[8] The hunger strike started in July 2005, and resumed in August 2005 because the detainees believed the US authorities failed to honour promises to meet their demands. From a written statement by Mohamed dated 11 August 2005:

"The administration promised that if we gave them 10 days, they would bring the prison into compliance with the Geneva conventions. They said this had been approved by Donald Rumsfeld himself in Washington DC. As a result of these promises, we agreed to end the strike on July 28.
"It is now August 11. They have betrayed our trust (again). Hisham from Tunisia was savagely beaten in his interrogation and they publicly desecrated the Qur'an (again). Saad from Kuwait was ERF'd [visited by the Extreme Reaction Force] for refusing to go (again) to interrogation because the female interrogator had sexually humiliated him (again) for 5 hours _ Therefore, the strike must begin again."[9][10]

On 7 August 2007, he was one of five Guantánamo detainees that British Foreign Secretary David Miliband requested be freed, citing the fact they had all applied for or had been granted refugee status, or similar leave, to remain in Britain prior to their capture by US forces.[11]

Charged with conspiracy

File:Building where military commissions are held at Joint Task Force-Guantánamo Bay.jpg
The original ten Presidentially authorized Military Commissions were convened in the former terminal building in the discontinued airfield on the Naval Base's Eastern Peninsula.
The Bush Presidency planned to house up to 80 of the new Congressionally authorized Military Commissions in a $12 million tent city.

On 7 November 2005, Mohamed was charged with conspiracy. The complaint alleges that Mohamed was trained in Kabul to build dirty bombs (weapons combining conventional explosives with radioactive material intended to be dispersed over a large area). According to the complaint, he was planning terror attacks against high-rise apartment buildings in the United States and was arrested at an airport in Pakistan, attempting to go to London while using a forged passport.[12][13]

At the start of his military commission Mohamed chose to represent himself. He decried the military commissions and stated he was not the person charged because the Prosecution had spelled his name incorrectly. He held up a sign "con mission" and stated: "This is not a commission, it's a con mission, It's a mission to con the world."[14]

In mid-2006 the United States Supreme Court over-ruled President Bush. The judges ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the President lacked the constitutional authority to create military commissions and Mohamed's military commission was halted.

In late 2008, new charges were filed against Binyam Mohamed after the United States Congress authorized new military commissions under the Military Commissions Act.

On 21 October 2008 Susan J. Crawford, the official in charge of the Office of Military Commissions, announced that charges were dropped against Mohamed and four other captives, Jabran al Qahtani, Ghassan al Sharbi, Sufyian Barhoumi, and Noor Uthman Muhammed.[15][16] Carol J. Williams, writing in the Los Angeles Times reported that all five men had been connected by Abu Zubaydah — one of the three captives the CIA has acknowledged was interrogated using the controversial technique, known as waterboarding.

Williams quoted the men's attorneys, who anticipated the five men would be re-charged within thirty days.[16] They told Williams that: "... prosecutors called the move procedural", and attributed it to the resignation of fellow Prosecutor Darrel Vandeveld, who resigned on ethical grounds. Williams reported that Clive Stafford Smith speculated that the Prosecution's dropping of the charges, and plans to subsequently re-file charges later was intended to counter and disarm the testimony Vandeveld was anticipated to offer, that the Prosecution had withheld exculpatory evidence.

Accusations of abusive incarceration and UK complicity

In December 2005 the declassification of his lawyer's notes permitted further claims of abusive interrogation to be made public.[17] Mohamed's further claims included that he was transported to a black site known as "the dark prison", where captives were permanently chained to the wall, kept in constant darkness, and constantly bombarded with "The Real Slim Shady " by Eminem for 20 days[18]

On 21 June 2008 the New York Times reported that the UK Government had sent a letter to Clive Stafford Smith, confirming that it had information about Binyam Mohamed's allegations of abuse.[19]

On Monday 28 July 2008 his lawyers filed a petition in an UK court that the Foreign Office should be compelled to turn over the evidence of Binyam Mohamed's abuse.[20] They also filed a petition with the Irish government for the records of his illegal transport over Ireland. On 21 August 2008, the High Court of the United Kingdom found in his favour, ruling that the Foreign Office should disclose this material. The judges said of the information that it was "not only necessary but essential for his defence". [21][22]

Although the documents were disclosed to Mohamed's legal counsel as ordered, they were not released to the general public,[23] and a later examination by the High Court found in favour of the Foreign Sectretary not to force their publication.[24] The reasons given were that — even if it was unreasonable for it to affect international relations — if the Foreign Secretary thought it was going to harm the special intelligence relationship with the United States, it would not be in the public interest.[25]

In February 2009, CBC News reported that Mohamed had described being warned to cooperate by two women who represented themselves as Canadians.[26] Each woman met represented herself as a third-party intervener, who warned him that she thought he should co-operate, and answer the American's questions fully, or he was likely to be tortured. According to the CBC report, Canada had an obligation to object if it were determined that the Americans had falsely represented US security officials as Canadians, as a ploy to trick Mohamed into confessing. Template:CSRT-Yes[2]

a. The detainee is associated with al Qaida or the Taliban.
  1. The detainee is ########## who lived in the United States from 1992 to 1994, and in London, United Kingdom, until he departed for Pakistan in 2001.
  2. The detainee arrived in Islamabad, Pakistan, in June 2001, and traveled to the al Faruq training camp in Afghanistan, to receive paramilitary training.
  3. At the al Faruq camp, the detainee received 40 days of training in light arms handling, explosives, and principles of topography.
  4. The detainee was taught to falsify documents, and received instruction from a senior al Qaida operative on how to encode telephone numbers before passing them to another individual.
  5. The detainee proposed, to senior-al Qaida leaders, the idea of attacking subway trains in the United States.
  6. The detainee was extracted from Afghanistan to Karachi, Pakistan, where he received explosives and remote-controlled-detonator training from an al Qaida operative.
  7. The detainee met with an al Qaida operative and was directed to travel to the United States to assist in terrorist operations.
  8. The detainee attempted to leave Pakistan for the United States but was detained and interrogated by Pakistani authorities, revealing his membership in al Qaida, the identities of Mujahidins he knew, and his plan to use a "dirty bomb" [sic] to carry out a terrorist attack in the United States.

Extraordinary rendition, CIA custody, Torture allegations

Binyam's attorneys reported that he had been subjected to "extraordinary rendition", transferred to Morocco, where he was tortured, and that he had also been held in a network of secret CIA interrogation centres, prior to his transfer to Guantánamo in 2004.[27][28]

Civil suit

On August 1 2007 Mohamed joined a civil suit filed under the United States' Alien Tort Statute, with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union.[29] [30][31][32][33] Mohamed was joined with four other men, Bisher Al-Rawi, Abou Elkassim Britel Ahmed Agiza and Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah.

Release

On 7 August 2007 the United Kingdom government requested the release of Binyam Mohamed and four other men who had been legal British residents without being British citizens.[34] He was not released however, and in June 2008 the U.S. military announced they were formally charging him.

On 16 January 2009 The Independent reported that Mohamed had told his lawyers he had been told to prepare for his return to the United Kingdom.[35] The Independent quoted a recently declassified note from Mohamed: "It has come to my attention through several reliable sources that my release from Guantánamo to the UK had been ordered several weeks ago. It is a cruel tactic of delay to suspend my travel till the last days of this [Bush] administration while I should have been home a long time ago."

Interviewed by Jon Snow of Channel 4 News on 9 February 2009 his military lawyer, Lt-Col Yvonne Bradley, asserted that there was no doubt that Mohamed had been tortured, and that Britain and the US were complicit in his torture.[36] Bradley subsequently took up his case directly with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on 11 February 2009.[37]

According to Agence France Presse Mohamed had been on a hunger strike but had stopped on 5 February 2009, when his lawyers informed him he could expect transfer to the UK soon.[38] He was visited on 14 and 15 February 2009 by a delegation of UK officials, including a doctor, who confirmed he was healthy enough to be flown back to England.

On 23 February 2009, almost seven years after his arrest, Mohamed was repatriated from Guantánamo to the UK, where he was released after questioning.[39]

Allegations of MI5 'collusion'

Two weeks after his release, the BBC published claims that British intelligence (MI5) had colluded with his interrogators by getting them to ask him specific questions which led to his making false confessions of terrorist activities. In the first memo, the MI5 agent asked for a name to be put to him and then for him to be questioned further about that person. The second telegram concerned a further interrogation. The legal organisation Reprieve, which represents Mohamed, said its client was shown the MI5 telegrams by his military lawyer Yvonne Bradley.

Although his claims of MI5 collusion are being investigated by the government, the Shadow Justice Secretary, Dominic Grieve, called for a judicial inquiry into the allegations and for the matter to be referred to the police. Shami Chakrabarti, director of campaign group Liberty said: "These are more than allegations - these are pieces of a puzzle that are being put together. It makes an immediate criminal investigation absolutely inescapable."[40]

On 12 March 2009 in an op-ed piece in The Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash called for Mohamed's claims of torture and MI5 collusion to be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions, saying that any other decision "will inevitably be interpreted as a political cover-up."[41]

References

  1. ^ OARDEC (2006-05-15). "List of Individuals Detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002 through May 15, 2006" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
  2. ^ a b Summary of Evidence memo (.pdf) prepared for Mohamed Ahmed Binyam's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - 10 November 2004 - page 135
  3. ^ Profile: Binyam Mohamed, BBC News, 23 February 2008
  4. ^ Mark Townsend (2009-02-01). "Guantánamo prisoner awaits return to Britain". The Observer. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
  5. ^ , The Guantánamo Docket, The New York Times
  6. ^ 89 Guantánamo detainees resume hunger strike, Boston Globe, 27 August 2005
  7. ^ 'One of them made cuts in my penis. I was in agony' The Guardian, 2 July 2005
  8. ^ Suspect's tale of travel and torture The Guardian, 2 August 2005
  9. ^ Hunger strikers pledge to die in Guantánamo, The Guardian, 9 September 2005
  10. ^ Guantánamo Hunger Strikes Resume, The NewStandard, 30 August 2005
  11. ^ "UK seeks Guantanamo men release". BBC News. 2007-08-07. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
  12. ^ Five More Guantánamo Detainees Charged, The Guardian, 7 November 2005
  13. ^ Pentagon IDs suspected terror accomplice: Detainee's lawyer denies accusation, alleges torture, CNN, 9 December 2005
  14. ^ [1]
  15. ^ Jane Sutton (2008-10-21). "U.S. drops charges against 5 Guantánamo captives". Reuters. Retrieved 2008-10-21. mirror
  16. ^ a b Carol J. Williams (2008-10-21). "War crimes charges dropped against 5 in Guantanamo". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2008-10-21. mirror
  17. ^ 'No record` of CIA flight requests, Monsters and Critics, 12 December 2005
  18. ^ U.S. Operated Secret ‘Dark Prison’ in Kabul, Human Rights Watch, 18 December 2005
  19. ^ Raymond Bonner (21 June 2008). "Britain Sends Information on Suspect to the U.S." New York Times. Retrieved 2008-06-21.
  20. ^ Mike Rosen-Molina (2008-07-29). "UK Guantanamo detainee asks court to order turnover of 'torture' evidence". The Jurist. Retrieved 2008-07-31. mirror
  21. ^ "UK Guantánamo inmate wins ruling". BBC News. 2008-08-21. Retrieved 2008-08-21.
  22. ^ "High Court rules against UK and US in case of Guantánamo torture victim Binyam Mohamed". 30 August 2008.
  23. ^ David Miliband, Foreign Secretary of UK (5 February 2009). "Binyam Mohamed". Hansard.
  24. ^ Norton-Taylor, Richard (4 February 2009). "US threats mean evidence of British resident's Guantánamo torture must stay secret, judges rule". The Guardian.
  25. ^ "The Queen on the application of Binyam Mohamed - v - Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs" (PDF). 4 February 2009.
  26. ^ "U.K. resident held at Gitmo alleges Canadian involvement in torture". CBC News. 2009-02-06. Retrieved 2009-02-09.
  27. ^ "One of them made cuts in my penis. I was in agony". The Guardian. 2005-08-02. Retrieved 2008-10-15. mirror
  28. ^ Stephen Grey, Ian Cobain (2005-08-02). "Suspect's tale of travel and torture". The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-10-15. mirror
  29. ^ "Two More Victims of CIA's Rendition Program, Including Former Guantánamo Detainee, Join ACLU Lawsuit Against Boeing Subsidiary". American Civil Liberties Union. August 1 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  30. ^ Marc Ambinder (2009-06-12). "Obama Holds On To State Secrets Privilege In Jeppesen Case". Atlantic magazine. Retrieved 2009-06-25.
  31. ^ "Italian 'Extraordinary Rendition' Victim Still Held In Morocco Based On Tortured Confession". PRNewswire. 2009-06-25. Retrieved 2009-06-25.
  32. ^ Michael P. Abate (June 2009). "Mohamed et al. v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc" (PDF). United States Department of Justice. Retrieved 2009-06-25.
  33. ^ "Mohamed et al. v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc". ACLU. June 2009. Retrieved 2009-06-25.
  34. ^ David Stringer (2007-08-07). "UK asks US to release 5 from Guantánamo". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved 2007-08-07.
  35. ^ Robert Verkaik (2009-01-17). "British resident to be freed after four years at Guantánamo Bay: Ethiopian refugee awaits news as he enters third week of hunger strike". The Independent. Retrieved 2009-01-17.
  36. ^ "US lawyer: 'Show us Binyam Mohamed torture papers now'". Channel 4 News. 2009-02-09. Retrieved 2009-03-20.
  37. ^ Yvonne Bradley (2009-02-11). "Bring Binyam home: The greatest injustice I fear is that Binyam Mohamed is still being held at Guantánamo only to suppress evidence of his torture". The Guardian. mirror
  38. ^ "Officials visit Guantánamo detainee". Agence France Presse. 2009-02-16. Retrieved 2009-02-16. mirror
  39. ^ Richard Norton-Taylor, Peter Walker and Robert Booth (2009-02-23). "Binyam Mohamed returns to Britain after Guantánamo ordeal". The Guardian.
  40. ^ "MI5 telegrams 'fed interrogation'". BBC News. 2009-03-07. Retrieved 2009-03-08.
  41. ^ Timothy Garton Ash (2009-03-12). "If Britain became complicit in torture, we must discover who is to blame". The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-03-14.


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