Hassan Mohammed Ali Bin Attash

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Hassan Mohammed Ali Bin Attash is a citizen of Saudi Arabia, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.[1] His detainee ID number is 1456. American intelligence analysts estimate that Bin Attash was born in 1985, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Clive Stafford Smith said bin Attash was just seventeen when he was captured.[2] Hassin is the brother of Waleed Mohammed bin Attash, who has also been described as an inmate in the CIA's network of secret prisons.[3] Hassin too claims he spent time in the other prisons, including "the dark prison", prior to being detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.[4]

Main article: Minors detained in the global war on terror

Contents

[edit] Human Rights Concern

The circumstances of Hassan Bin Attash have triggered the attention of several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Reprieve and Human Rights Watch.[5][6][3][7] According to their accounts Hassan Bin Attash was captured on September 10, 2002, spent time in the dark prison, spent four months in Jordan, where he was hung upside down, and beaten on the soles of his feet, which were then immersed in salt water. They assert that he underwent this kind of questioning until he was willing to sign anything. They claim that he wasn't interrogated about anything he himself had done, but rather about the activity of his older brother. They assert that his 70 year-old father underwent similar questioning. Bin Attash was flown to Guantanamo in March 2003.

The Boston Globe quoted Guantanamo spokesmen Lieutenant Commander Chito Peppler, who insisted, "US policy requires all detainees to be treated humanely,"[7]

Peppler repeated the assertion that none of the captive's assertions of abuse were credible because al Qaeda trained operatives to lie about abuse.[7]

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Initially the Bush administration asserted that they could withhold all the protections of the Geneva Conventions to captives from the war on terror. This policy was challenged before the Judicial branch. Critics argued that the USA could not evade its obligation to conduct competent tribunals to determine whether captives are, or are not, entitled to the protections of prisoner of war status.

Subsequently the Department of Defense instituted the Combatant Status Review Tribunal. The Tribunals, however, were not authorized to determine whether the captives were lawful combatants -- rather they were merely empowered to make a recommendation as to whether the captive had previously been correctly determined to match the Bush administration's definition of an enemy combatant.

To comply with a Freedom of Information Act request, during the winter and spring of 2005, the Department of Defense released 507 memoranda. Those 507 memoranda each contained the allegations against a single detainee, prepared for their Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The detainee's name and ID numbers were redacted from all but one of the memoranda. However 169 of the memoranda had the detainee's ID hand-written on the top right hand of the first page corner. When the Department of Defense complied with a court order, and released official lists of the detainee's names and ID numbers it was possible to identify who those 169 were written about. Hassan Mohammed Ali Bin Attash was one of those 169 detainees.[8]

[edit] Allegations

'a. The detainee is a member of the Taliban of al Qaida.
  1. The detainee traveled to Afghanistan for Jihad, one to two months prior to Ramadan in 1997.
  2. The detainee stayed at a Jihadist guesthouse during his travel to Afghanistan.
  3. In Afghanistan, the detainee received weapons training on the Kalishnikov, Beeka, and Deshooka, as well as on explosive devices such as mines, grenades and mortars.
  4. The detainee also attended an explosives class.
  5. The detainee took bomb making classes in Khowst, Afghanistan.
  6. The detainee was a foot soldier in Jalalabad.
  7. The detainee took an al Qaida operative from Afghanistan to Pakistan to establish a safehuuse and organize an operation to plan al Qaida attacks against U.S. Naval Vessels and U.S. Oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz.
  8. The detainee forwarded money that allowed al Qaida operatives to travel to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in support of the operation to attack U.S. interests.
  9. The detainee used the aliases ###### ###### ###### ###### ######
  10. ###### ###### ###### is a prominent member of al Qaida.
  11. ###### ###### ###### who is currently in jail in Saudi Arabia, is a close contact of Usama Bin Laden.
  12. The detainee stated that since he joined al Qaida he was treated well by the organization due to ###### ###### ###### ###### ###### ###### with Usama Bin Laden.
  13. The detainee was arrested in a raid on al Qaida safehouses, Pakistan on 11 September 2002.

[edit] References

  1. ^ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006
  2. ^ Kids of Guantanamo, cageprisoners.com, June 15, 2005
  3. ^ a b List of “Ghost Prisoners” Possibly in CIA Custody, Human Rights Watch, December 1, 2005
  4. ^ U.S. Operated Secret 'Dark Prison' in Kabul, Reuters, December 19, 2005
  5. ^ Guantánamo: pain and distress for thousands of children, Amnesty International
  6. ^ Reprieve uncovers evidence indicating German territory may have been used in rendition and abuse, Reprieve, October 10, 2006
  7. ^ a b c 7 detainees report transfer to nations that use torture, Boston Globe, April 26, 2006
  8. ^ Summary of Evidence memo (.pdf) prepared for Hassan Mohammed Ali Bin Attash's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - November 9, 2004 - page 274
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