Binyam Mohamed

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

Binyam Ahmed Mohamed (Arabic: بنيام محمد) (also described as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam (Ahmed) Mohammed and Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi) (born 24 July 1978) is an Ethiopian national who, the US authorities claim, trained in the Al-Qaeda training camp Al Farouq, and was subsequently detained in Guantanamo Bay prison. He was captured and transported under the US extraordinary rendition program. After charges against him were dropped, he was eventually released and arrived back in the UK on 23rd February 2009. Mohamed has claimed that the only evidence against him was obtained using torture.

Background

Binyam Mohamed has claimed to have been tortured in US custody, and tortured while in nominally Moroccan custody. He was alleged to have played a role in what US counter-terrorism analysts characterized as a "dirty bomb plot" with Jose Padilla.

On February 1, 2009, The Observer reported that "frantic preparations" were underway for his return to the UK, because a hunger strike had left him on the brink of imminent death.

Detention before being charged

In 1994, Mohamed sought asylum in the UK.

In June 2001, Mohamed travelled to Afghanistan. The reasons for the trip are in dispute. UK 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. Mohamed's supporters contend that he had gone to conquer his drug problems and to see Muslim countries "with his own eyes". After 9/11, he went to Pakistan.

On April 10, 2002, Mohamed was arrested at the Karachi airport - while attempting to fly to the UK - 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 and UK intelligence agents.

Before his transfer to Guantanamo 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.

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, states that Mohamed participated in recent hunger strikes to protest against the harsh conditions and lack of access to any judicial review. 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."

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

Charged with conspiracy

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 November 7, 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.

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

In the summer of 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 the winter of 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 charges were dropped against Mohamed and four other captives, Jabran al Qahtani, Ghassan al Sharbi, Sufyian Barhoumi, and Noor Uthman Muhammed. Carol J. Williams, writing in the Los Angeles Times reports 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 in thirty days. 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. Mohamed further claims include 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 by loud noises and rap and heavy metal music. Mohamed claims that, while in the dark prison, his captors purposely injected him with heroin, to get him addicted, in order to use his addiction against him.

On June 21 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.

On Monday July 28 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. They also filed a petition with the Irish government for the records of his illegal transport over Ireland. On August 21 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".

Although the documents were disclosed to Mr. Mohamed's legal counsel as ordered, they were not released to the general public, and a later examination by the High Court found in favour of the Foreign Sectretary not to force their publication. The reasons given were that -- even if it was unreasonable for it to effect 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.

In February 2009 the CBC News reported that Mohamed described being warned to cooperate by two women who represented themselves as Canadians. Each woman met represented themselves as third-party interveners, who warned him that they thought he should cooperate, and tell answer the American's questions fully, or he was likely to be tortured. According to the CBC Canada still bore an obligation to object if it was determined the Americans had falsely represented American security officials as Canadians, during a ploy to trick Mohamed into confessions.

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 report 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 Guantanamo in 2004.

Release

On August 7, 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. He was not released however, and in June 2008 the U.S. military announced they were formally charging Mohamed.

On January 16, 2009 The Independent reported that Mohamed had told his lawyers he had been told to prepare for his return to the United Kingdom. The Independent quoted a recently declassified note from Mohamed:

"It has come to my attention through several reliable sources that my release from Guantanamo 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."

Having asserted in an interview with Jon Snow of Channel 4 News that there was no doubt that he had been tortured, Mohamed's lawyer, Lt-Col Yvonne Bradley, went to take up his case with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on February 12, 2009.

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

Finally, on February 23, 2009, almost seven years after his arrest, Mohamed was flown back to the UK, where he was released after questioning.

References

Stafford Smith, Clive (2008). Bad Men. United Kingdom: Phoenix. pp. 49–127. ISBN 978-0-7538-2352-1.

External links

• Charge Sheets from the United States Department of Defense
• Military Commissions - Muhammed Commission Transcripts, Exhibits, and Allied Papers from the United States Department of Defense
• Benyam Mohammed al Habashi Case Sheet from Amnesty International USA
• FAQs: What Are State Secrets from the Center for Constitutional Rights
• Extraordinary Rendition: Documentary about Guantanamo Bay and Binyam Mohammed from Alpha One Productions
• Lord Goldsmith Lord Goldsmith: Britain must help out on Guantanamo The Independent, February 9, 2009