Benyam Mohammed
Encyclopedia
Binyam Ahmed Mohamed (also described as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam (Ahmed) Mohammed and Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi) (born 24 July 1978) is an Ethiopia
n national, who was detained in Guantanamo Bay
prison between 2004 and 2009.
He was captured and transported under the US extraordinary rendition program. Mohamed's military representative reported that he had admitted while he was detained that he had trained in the Al-Qaeda
terrorist training camp Al Farouq, but has since said that the evidence against him was obtained using torture
. After charges against him were dropped, he was eventually released and arrived in the United Kingdom on 23 February 2009. In February 2010, the UK Court of Appeal
ruled that he had been subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities".
custody.
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 Mohamed 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.
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
. Mohamed's supporters contend that he had gone to conquer his drug problems and to see Muslim countries "with his own eyes". Mohamed said that he had made false statements while being tortured in Pakistani jails. He admitted to military training, but said that it was to fightin Chechnya, which was not illegal. On 10 April 2002, Mohamed was arrested at Pakistan's Karachi
airport by Pakistani authorities as a suspected terrorist
, while attempting to fly to the UK using a false passport. 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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
On 7 November 2005, Mohamed was charged with conspiracy
. The complaint alleges that Mohamed was trained in Kabul
to build dirty bomb
s (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. 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."
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
in 2006.
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.
Carol J. Williams, writing in the Los Angeles Times
, reported that all five men had been connected to 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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".
Although the documents were disclosed to 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 Secretary not to force their publication. 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
.
In February 2009, CBC News
reported that Mohamed had described being warned to cooperate by two women, who represented themselves as Canadians.
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.
", 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.
Mohamed joined a civil suit filed under the United States' Alien Tort Statute
against Jeppesen Dataplan, with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union
.
The defendant
in the case was a Boeing
subsidiary accused of arranging extraordinary rendition flights for the CIA. This was a joint lawsuit with four other plaintiffs, Bisher Al-Rawi, Abou Elkassim Britel
, Ahmed Agiza
, and Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah.
Accepting the argument of the Obama administration that hearing the case would divulge state secret
s, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
dismissed the lawsuit on September 8, 2010.
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.
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
. Bradley subsequently took up his case directly with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband
on 11 February 2009.
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.
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.
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."
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."
On 10 February 2010, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that material held by the UK Foreign Secretary must revealed. The court regretted that it had 'to conclude that the reports provided to the SyS [Security Service] made clear to anyone reading them that BM [Binyam Mohamed] was being subjected to the treatment that we have described and the effect upon him of that intentional treatment." "The treatment reported, if had been administered on behalf of the United Kingdom, would clearly have been in breach of the undertakings given by the United Kingdom in 1972 [in the UN convention on torture]." '
and other media organisations, Mohamed and two civil rights groups, Liberty and Justice, argued that the public interest in disclosing the role played by British and US agencies in unlawful activities far outweighs any claim about potential threats to national security.
On December 20, 2009, a U.S. judge, Gladys Kessler, found that there was "credible" evidence that a British resident was tortured while being detained on behalf of Washington. A formerly classified legal opinion, handed down by a judge in the US district court and obtained by the Observer
, acknowledges that the US government does not dispute "credible" evidence that Binyam Mohamed had been tortured while being held at "its behest".
On January 27, 2010, it was reported that the "United Nations
human rights investigators have concluded that the British government has been complicit in the mistreatment and possible torture of several of its own citizens during the "war on terror". Among the cases listed, in which they conclude that a state has been complicit in a secret detention, the authors highlight "the United Kingdom in the cases of several individuals, including Binyam Mohamed.
On February 10, 2010 three senior judges, sitting in the Court of Appeal, ordered the British government to reveal evidence of MI5 and MI6 complicity in the torture of Binyam Mohamed, overruling the foreign secretary, David Miliband.
In response to highly critical media coverage, Mr Alan Johnson
, the Home Secretary, insisted that the coverage of the torture had been “baseless, groundless accusations”. He also said that government lawyers had not forced the judiciary to water down criticism of MI5, despite an earlier, draft ruling by Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls
that the Security Service had failed to respect human rights, deliberately misled parliament, and had a "culture of suppression" that undermined government assurances about its conduct.
According to the Washington Post the court order forcing the British Government to publish secret memos it received from US intelligence officials will jeopardize future US-UK intelligence sharing.
The Washington Post quoted "White House officials" on February 10, 2010, who said the publication: "will complicate the confidentiality of our intelligence-sharing relationship.".
According to The Guardian
an anonymous White House officials had told them: "the court decision would not provoke a broad review of intelligence liaison between Britain and the US because the need for close co-operation was greater now than ever."
At the end Mohamed received 1 million UK pound compensation from the British government.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055474/Going-shopping-terror-suspect-pocketed-million-compensation-torture-claims.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
n national, who was detained in Guantanamo Bay
Guantanamo Bay detainment camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a detainment and interrogation facility of the United States located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The facility was established in 2002 by the Bush Administration to hold detainees from the war in Afghanistan and later Iraq...
prison between 2004 and 2009.
He was captured and transported under the US extraordinary rendition program. Mohamed's military representative reported that he had admitted while he was detained that he had trained in the Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
terrorist training camp Al Farouq, but has since said that the evidence against him was obtained using torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
. After charges against him were dropped, he was eventually released and arrived in the United Kingdom on 23 February 2009. In February 2010, the UK Court of Appeal
Court of Appeal of England and Wales
The Court of Appeal of England and Wales is the second most senior court in the English legal system, with only the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom above it...
ruled that he had been subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities".
Background
Mohamed has said that he was tortured in US custody, and tortured while in nominally MoroccanMorocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
custody.
He was alleged to have played a role in what American counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism is the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt to prevent or in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.The tactic of terrorism is available to insurgents and governments...
analysts characterized as a "dirty bomb
Dirty bomb
A dirty bomb is a speculative radiological weapon that combines radioactive material with conventional explosives. The purpose of the weapon is to contaminate the area around the explosion with radioactive material, hence the attribute "dirty"....
plot" with Jose Padilla, despite the fact that it became clear, almost from the moment that Mohamed was seized, that the plot never existed. In June 2002, Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz is a former United States Ambassador to Indonesia, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank, and former dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University...
, the deputy to US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...
, 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
Born in Ethiopia, Mohamed came to United Kingdom in 1994, where he lived for seven years, sought political asylum and was given leave to remain while his case was resolved.In June 2001, Mohamed travelled to Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
. 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
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
training in the al Farouq training camp
Al Farouq training camp
The Al Farouq training camp, also known as "the airport camp", was an alleged Al-Qaeda training camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan. Camp attendees received small-arms training, map-reading, orientation, explosives training, and other training....
. Mohamed's supporters contend that he had gone to conquer his drug problems and to see Muslim countries "with his own eyes". Mohamed said that he had made false statements while being tortured in Pakistani jails. He admitted to military training, but said that it was to fightin Chechnya, which was not illegal. On 10 April 2002, Mohamed was arrested at Pakistan's Karachi
Karachi
Karachi is the largest city, main seaport and the main financial centre of Pakistan, as well as the capital of the province of Sindh. The city has an estimated population of 13 to 15 million, while the total metropolitan area has a population of over 18 million...
airport by Pakistani authorities as a suspected terrorist
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
, while attempting to fly to the UK using a false passport. Mohamed contends that he was a subject of the United States extraordinary rendition policy, and entered a "ghost prison system
Ghost detainee
Ghost detainee is an official term used by the U.S. Government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous. It was also used in the same manner by the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the Abu...
" run by US intelligence agents.
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.
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
Clive Stafford Smith
Clive Adrian Stafford Smith OBE is a British [see talk] lawyer who specialises in the areas of civil rights and the death penalty in the United States of America....
, said 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 RumsfeldDonald RumsfeldDonald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...
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). HishamHisham SlitiHisham Sliti, a Tunisian, is currently being held as an enemy combatant in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.The list of the names of all the Guantanamo detainees states that his date of birth was February 12, 1966, in Hamam Lif, TunisiaAs of Aug...
from TunisiaTunisiaTunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
was savagely beaten in his interrogation and they publicly desecrated the Qur'anQur'anThe Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
(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 7 August 2007, he was one of five Guantánamo detainees that British Foreign Secretary David Miliband
David Miliband
David Wright Miliband is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for South Shields since 2001, and was the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2007 to 2010. He is the elder son of the late Marxist theorist Ralph 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.
Charged with conspiracy
Conspiracy (crime)
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement...
. The complaint alleges that Mohamed was trained in Kabul
Kabul
Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...
to build dirty bomb
Dirty bomb
A dirty bomb is a speculative radiological weapon that combines radioactive material with conventional explosives. The purpose of the weapon is to contaminate the area around the explosion with radioactive material, hence the attribute "dirty"....
s (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. 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
Confidence trick
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,...
mission, It's a mission to con the world."
In mid-2006 the United States Supreme Court over-ruled President Bush. The judges ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 , is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay lack "the power to proceed because its structures and procedures violate both the Uniform Code of Military...
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
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
authorized new military commissions under the Military Commissions Act
Military Commissions Act of 2006
The United States Military Commissions Act of 2006, also known as HR-6166, was an Act of Congress signed by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006. Drafted in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision on Hamdan v...
in 2006.
On 21 October 2008 Susan J. Crawford
Susan J. Crawford
Susan J. Crawford is an US lawyer, who was appointed the Convening Authority for the Guantanamo military commissions, on February 7, 2007.Secretary of Defense Robert Gates appointed Crawford to replace John D...
, 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
Sufyian Barhoumi
Sufyian Barhoumi is a citizen of Algeria, who is currently held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.The Department of Defense reports that he was born on 28 July 1973, in Algiers, Algeria....
, and Noor Uthman Muhammed.
Carol J. Williams, writing in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, reported that all five men had been connected to Abu Zubaydah
Abu Zubaydah
Abu Zubaydah is a Saudi Arabian citizen, sentenced to death in Jordan and currently held in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Not neutral: Arrested in Pakistan in March 2002, he has been in US custody for more than eight years, four-and-a-half of them spent incommunicado in solitary confinement...
— one of the three captives the CIA has acknowledged was interrogated using the controversial technique known as waterboarding
Waterboarding
Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over the face of an immobilized captive, thus causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning...
. Williams quoted the men's attorneys, who anticipated the five men would be re-charged within 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
Clive Stafford Smith
Clive Adrian Stafford Smith OBE is a British [see talk] lawyer who specialises in the areas of civil rights and the death penalty in the United States of America....
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's further claims included that he was transported to a black site
Black site
In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black project is conducted. Recently, the term has gained notoriety in describing secret prisons operated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency , generally outside of U.S. territory and legal jurisdiction. It...
known as "the dark prison
The Dark Prison
The dark prison is the informal name used by some Guantanamo Bay detainees for a secret prison they claim they were detained in near Kabul, Afghanistan...
", where captives were permanently chained to the wall, kept in constant darkness, and constantly bombarded with "The Real Slim Shady
The Real Slim Shady
"The Real Slim Shady" is a hip hop song written by Eminem for his third studio album The Marshall Mathers LP . It was released as the lead single a week before the album's release...
" by Eminem
Eminem
Marshall Bruce Mathers III , better known by his stage name Eminem or his alter ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor. Eminem's popularity brought his group project, D12, to mainstream recognition...
for 20 days
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.
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.
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
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, commonly called the Foreign Office or the FCO is a British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom overseas, created in 1968 by merging the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office.The head of the FCO is the...
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 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 Secretary not to force their publication. 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
Public interest
The public interest refers to the "common well-being" or "general welfare." The public interest is central to policy debates, politics, democracy and the nature of government itself...
.
In February 2009, CBC News
CBC News
CBC News is the department within the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the news gathering and production of news programs on CBC television, radio and online services...
reported that Mohamed had described being warned to cooperate by two women, who represented themselves as Canadians.
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.
Extraordinary rendition, CIA custody, Torture allegations
Binyam's attorneys reported that he had been subjected to "extraordinary renditionExtraordinary rendition
Extraordinary rendition is the abduction and illegal transfer of a person from one nation to another. "Torture by proxy" is used by some critics to describe situations in which the United States and the United Kingdom have transferred suspected terrorists to other countries in order to torture the...
", transferred to Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
, 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.
Civil suit
On August 1, 2007Mohamed joined a civil suit filed under the United States' Alien Tort Statute
Alien Tort Statute
The Alien Tort Statute ) is a section of the United States Code that reads: "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." This statute is notable for allowing...
against Jeppesen Dataplan, with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
.
The defendant
Defendant
A defendant or defender is any party who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff or pursuer in a civil lawsuit before a court, or any party who has been formally charged or accused of violating a criminal statute...
in the case was a Boeing
Boeing
The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...
subsidiary accused of arranging extraordinary rendition flights for the CIA. This was a joint lawsuit with four other plaintiffs, Bisher Al-Rawi, Abou Elkassim Britel
Abou Elkassim Britel
Abou Elkassim Britel is a citizen of Italy who is reported to have been transported through the United States' controversial extraordinary rendition program.Abou was first apprehended in Pakistan, in February 2002, who handed him over to American authorities....
, Ahmed Agiza
Ahmed Agiza
Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad Alzery were two Egyptian asylum-seekers who were deported to Egypt from Sweden on December 18, 2001, apparently following a request from the United States Central Intelligence Agency...
, and Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah.
Accepting the argument of the Obama administration that hearing the case would divulge state secret
State Secret
State Secret is a 1950 British drama film directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Jack Hawkins, Glynis Johns and Herbert Lom. It was released in the United States under the title The Great Manhunt.-Cast:...
s, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...
dismissed the lawsuit on September 8, 2010.
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. 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
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
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 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
Jon Snow
Jon Snow is an English journalist and presenter, currently employed by ITN. He is best known for presenting Channel 4 News.He was Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University from 2001 to 2008.-Early life:...
of Channel 4 News
Channel 4 News
Channel 4 News is the news division of British television broadcaster Channel 4. It is produced by ITN, and has been in operation since the broadcaster's launch in 1982.-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
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
. Bradley subsequently took up his case directly with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband
David Miliband
David Wright Miliband is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for South Shields since 2001, and was the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2007 to 2010. He is the elder son of the late Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband...
on 11 February 2009.
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.
He was visited on 14 and 15 February 2009 by a delegation of UK officials, including a doctor
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...
, 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.
Allegations of MI5 collusion
Two weeks after his release, the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
published claims that British intelligence (MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
) 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
Dominic Grieve
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve, QC MP is a British Conservative politician, barrister and Queen's Counsel.He is the Member of Parliament for Beaconsfield and the Attorney General for England and Wales and the Advocate General for Northern Ireland.-Early life:Grieve was born in Lambeth, the son of...
, called for a judicial inquiry into the allegations and for the matter to be referred to the police
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
. Shami Chakrabarti
Shami Chakrabarti
Shami Chakrabarti CBE , has been the director of Liberty, a British pressure group, since September 2003. Chakrabarti is the Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University.-Early life:...
, director of campaign group Liberty
Liberty (pressure group)
Liberty is a pressure group based in the United Kingdom. Its formal name is the National Council for Civil Liberties . Founded in 1934 by Ronald Kidd and Sylvia Crowther-Smith , the group campaigns to protect civil liberties and promote human rights...
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."
On 12 March 2009 in an op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
piece in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, Timothy Garton Ash
Timothy Garton Ash
Timothy Garton Ash is a British historian, author and commentator. He is currently serving as Professor of European Studies at Oxford University. Much of his work has been concerned with the late modern and contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe...
called for Mohamed's claims of torture and MI5 collusion to be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions
Crown Prosecution Service
The Crown Prosecution Service, or CPS, is a non-ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for public prosecutions of people charged with criminal offences in England and Wales. Its role is similar to that of the longer-established Crown Office in Scotland, and the...
, saying that any other decision "will inevitably be interpreted as a political cover-up."
On 10 February 2010, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that material held by the UK Foreign Secretary must revealed. The court regretted that it had 'to conclude that the reports provided to the SyS [Security Service] made clear to anyone reading them that BM [Binyam Mohamed] was being subjected to the treatment that we have described and the effect upon him of that intentional treatment." "The treatment reported, if had been administered on behalf of the United Kingdom, would clearly have been in breach of the undertakings given by the United Kingdom in 1972 [in the UN convention on torture]." '
UK government loses confidentiality appeal, MI5 implicated in collusion with torture
The case of determining British involvement (mainly MI5 and MI6) in the unlawful treatment of a UK resident Mohamed by the CIA, was eventually tried at court in 2009 and appealed in 2010. Despite attempts by the foreign secretary, David Miliband to suppress evidence citing such disclosure would harm national security because it was given in confidence by the US authorities, the government lost the case at the high court. On 14 December 2009, Miliband appealed against the six high court judgements ruling, that CIA information on Mohamed's treatment, and what MI5 and MI6 knew about it, must be disclosed. In a case unprecedented, counsel for the GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and other media organisations, Mohamed and two civil rights groups, Liberty and Justice, argued that the public interest in disclosing the role played by British and US agencies in unlawful activities far outweighs any claim about potential threats to national security.
On December 20, 2009, a U.S. judge, Gladys Kessler, found that there was "credible" evidence that a British resident was tortured while being detained on behalf of Washington. A formerly classified legal opinion, handed down by a judge in the US district court and obtained by the Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, acknowledges that the US government does not dispute "credible" evidence that Binyam Mohamed had been tortured while being held at "its behest".
On January 27, 2010, it was reported that the "United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
human rights investigators have concluded that the British government has been complicit in the mistreatment and possible torture of several of its own citizens during the "war on terror". Among the cases listed, in which they conclude that a state has been complicit in a secret detention, the authors highlight "the United Kingdom in the cases of several individuals, including Binyam Mohamed.
On February 10, 2010 three senior judges, sitting in the Court of Appeal, ordered the British government to reveal evidence of MI5 and MI6 complicity in the torture of Binyam Mohamed, overruling the foreign secretary, David Miliband.
In response to highly critical media coverage, Mr Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson
Alan Arthur Johnson is a British Labour Party politician who served as Home Secretary from June 2009 to May 2010. Before that, he filled a wide variety of cabinet positions in both the Blair and Brown governments, including Health Secretary and Education Secretary. Until 20 January 2011 he was...
, the Home Secretary, insisted that the coverage of the torture had been “baseless, groundless accusations”. He also said that government lawyers had not forced the judiciary to water down criticism of MI5, despite an earlier, draft ruling by Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls
Master of the Rolls
The Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England, known as the Master of the Rolls, is the second most senior judge in England and Wales, after the Lord Chief Justice. The Master of the Rolls is the presiding officer of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal...
that the Security Service had failed to respect human rights, deliberately misled parliament, and had a "culture of suppression" that undermined government assurances about its conduct.
According to the Washington Post the court order forcing the British Government to publish secret memos it received from US intelligence officials will jeopardize future US-UK intelligence sharing.
The Washington Post quoted "White House officials" on February 10, 2010, who said the publication: "will complicate the confidentiality of our intelligence-sharing relationship.".
According to The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
an anonymous White House officials had told them: "the court decision would not provoke a broad review of intelligence liaison between Britain and the US because the need for close co-operation was greater now than ever."
At the end Mohamed received 1 million UK pound compensation from the British government.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055474/Going-shopping-terror-suspect-pocketed-million-compensation-torture-claims.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
External links
- Biography of Plaintiff Binyam Mohamed
- Profile: Binyam Mohamed
- AUDIO: Binyam blames UK for mistreatment
- AUDIO: Moazzam Begg interviews Binyam Mohamed
- Transcript: Moazzam Begg interviews Binyam Mohamed
- AUDIO: Channel 4's Jon Snow interviews Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley, Binyam Mohamed's US lawyer
- How MI5 colluded in my torture: Binyam Mohamed claims British agents fed Moroccan torturers their questions - WORLD EXCLUSIVE (Interview with Binyam Mohamed
- Torture claims by British resident are given credence by American judge
- Binyam Mohamed case: David Miliband steps up bid to hide proof of torture
- Charge Sheets from the United States Department of DefenseUnited States Department of DefenseThe United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
- Military Commissions - Muhammed Commission Transcripts, Exhibits, and Allied Papers from the United States Department of DefenseUnited States Department of DefenseThe United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
- Benyam Mohammed al Habashi Case Sheet from Amnesty International USAAmnesty International USAAmnesty International USA is one of many country sections that make up Amnesty International worldwide.Amnesty International is an organization of more than 2.2 million supporters, activists and volunteers in over 150 countries, with complete independence from government, corporate or national...
- FAQs: What Are State Secrets from the Center for Constitutional RightsCenter for Constitutional RightsAl Odah v. United States:Al Odah is the latest in a series of habeas corpus petitions on behalf of people imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The case challenges the Military Commissions system’s suitability as a habeas corpus substitute and the legality, in general, of detention at...
- Extraordinary Rendition: Documentary about Guantánamo Bay and Binyam Mohamed from Alpha One Productions
- Britain's dirty torture secrets to be laid bare: Huge payouts for victims as PM orders inquiry into security services Daily MailDaily MailThe Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
, July 6, 2010