Binyam Mohamed

Updated: Sept. 9, 2010


Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen, was held at Guantánamo from late 2004 until his release on Feb. 23, 2009, ending an 18-month standoff with Britain, which had been seeking his release since August 2007.
In February 2010, the British government lost a protracted court battle to protect secret American intelligence information about the treatment of Mr. Mohamed and immediately published details of what it called the "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" administered to the detainee by American officials.
The summary said that while Mr. Mohamed had been in American custody before reaching the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he had been subjected to "continuous sleep deprivation," shackled during interrogations and exposed to "threats and inducements" that included playing on his fears of being "removed from United States custody and ‘disappearing.' " The document said he had been kept on a suicide watch and cited that as evidence that the treatment was causing him "significant mental stress and suffering."
Mr. Mohammed was also the lead plaintiff in a case against a subsidiary of Boeing accused of arranging flights for the Central Intelligence Agency to transfer prisoners to other countries for imprisonment and interrogation. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the case, arguing that Jeppesen was complicit in that alleged abuse. But in September 2010 a federal appeals court ruled against the plaintiffs, saying that a trial might expose secret government information.
Mr. Mohamed, the son of an Ethiopian Airlines official, moved to Britain as a teenager and left for Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He was arrested there on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks on targets in the United States.
Mr. Mohamed was taken to Morocco, where he was held for 18 months, according to court rulings and American and British officials. He has said he was tortured during the American interrogation and photographs were taken of his injuries. The United States told the British Foreign Office that Mr. Mohamed was in good health when he arrived at Guantánamo, in late 2004.
After Mr. Mohamed was captured, then Attorney General John Ashcroft said he had been complicit with Jose Padilla to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the United States. In 2008, the Justice Department said it was dropping the dirty-bomb charges against Mr. Mohamed, and in October all charges against him were dropped.
Details of negotiations on a highly restrictive plea bargain for Mr. Mohamed were revealed in a legal document released by a British court on March 23, 2009.  The measures proposed by the United States included a prison term of at least three years more than the seven he had already been detained, a gag order, an end to his efforts to obtain documents that might bolster his claims that he was tortured while in C.I.A. custody, and an agreement not to file lawsuits against the United States government or any of its officials. Mr. Mohamed rejected the offer.
His lawyers have filed lawsuits to obtain photographs, as well as 42 other classified documents, which the British court said lent credence to Mr. Mohamed's allegations that he had been tortured.


                                                                                                                                     Source: NYTIMES