| Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 3, 1960 Khartoum, Sudan |
| Detained at | Guantanamo |
| ISN | 54 |
| Charge(s) | One of the ten captives to originally face charges before a military commission. |
| Status | Guilty plea on July 7, 2010. |
Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi (إبراهيم أحمد محمود القوسي) (born July 3, 1960) is a Sudanese citizen and alleged paymaster for al-Qaida.[1] He was captured in December, 2001 in Afghanistan. Qosi is held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.[2] His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number is 54. The Department of Defense reports that he was born on July 3, 1960, in Khartoum, Sudan.
As of July 11, 2010, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi has been held at Guantanamo for eight years and six months.[3]
Contents |
Al Qosi has a brother named Abdullah.
Al Qosi is one of approximately two dozen detainees who has faced charges before a Guantanamo military commission.
A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for the tribunal, listing the allegations that led to his detainment. His memo accused him of the following:[4]
- a. The detainee is a member of al Qaeda:
- The detainee admitted he traveled from Sudan to Afghanistan to train for and fight the Jihad in 1990.
- The detainee attended Al Farouq training camp and trained on the following weapons: Makarov 9mm pistol, Seminov, AK-47, AKSU-74, RPG-7, RGD-5, Offensive Hand Grenade, F-1 Antipersonnel Grenade, and M-43 120mm Mortar.
- The detainee was deployed to the Mujahadin front line in Afghanistan in 1990.
- The detainee was asked to work as an accountant for Usama Bin Ladin in Khartoum, Sudan in December 1991.
- The detainee met Usama Bin Ladin at a guesthouse in Khartoum, Sudan and worked for Bin Ladin's Taba Commercial Company in 1992, as the treasurer-accountant.
- The detainee wrote to Usama Bin Ladin requesting to go to Chechnya to fight the Jihad in 1995, where he used the M-43 120mm Mortar.
- The detainee joined Usama Bin Laden in the Tora Bora Mountains in September or October 1996.
- The detainee resided at the Star of Jihad compound with Usama Bin Ladin from 1996 through part of 1997, where he was in charge of the kitchen.
- b. The detainee participated in military operations against the coalition.
- The detainee traveled back and forth between the front lines of Kabul and Kandahar, Afghanistan around the time of the 1998 U.S. Embassay bombings, and 2001.
- The detainee fought the Jihad in Kabul because Massoud;s forces threatened the city.
- The detainee fled to Tora Bora after September 2001.
- The detainee fled Tora Bora with his Kalishnikov rifle for the Pakistani Border, where he was captured by Pakistani tribes and turned over to Pakistani officials.
A petition of habeas corpus was filed on Al Qosi's behalf.[5] Over two hundred captives had habeas corpus petitions filed on their behalf before the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 closed off the captives' access to the US civilian justice system. On June 12, 2008, in its ruling on the Boumediene v. Bush habeas corpus petition, the United States Supreme Court over-rode the Congress and Presidency, and restored the captives' access to habeas corpus.
In September 2007 the Department of Defense published the unclassified dossiers arising from the Combatant Status Review Tribunals of 179 captives.[6] The Department of Defense withheld the unclassified documents from Al Qosi's Tribunal. The Department of Defense did not explain why it withheld the unclassified documents from Al Qosi's Tribunal.
On February 24, 2004, he was named in documents for the first military commissions to be held for detainees.[7] The U.S. alleges that he joined al-Qaida in 1989 and worked as a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, as well as working as a quartermaster for al-Qaida. He is also alleged to have been the treasurer of a business which was an al-Qaida front.
He was indicted along with Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul. The indictment should allow them access to defense lawyers to prepare their defenses. He is charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes, including attacking civilians, murder, destruction of property and terrorism.
Lieutenant Colonel Sharon Shaffer USAF was appointed Qosi's lawyer on February 6, 2004.[8]
On August 27, 2004 Shaffer complained that she was not being provided with information she needed for her defense of Qosi, that Qosi had informed her that the quality of translation at his military commission was insufficient for him to understand what was happening.[9] She told the Tribunal that she had to resign as Qosi's attorney.
According to the Voice of America, Chief Prosecutor Colonel Robert L. Swann assured the commission that:
On November 9, 2004 legal action against Qosi was suspended,[10] US District Court Justice James Robertson had ruled, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that the military commissions violated International agreements to which the United States was a signatory. This ruling applied to all four of the detainees who had been charged by the military commission.
On July 15, 2005 a three judge appeal panel over-turned Robertson's ruling, setting the commissions back in motion.
On November 7, 2005 the US Supreme Court announced that they would be reviewing Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
Qosi's case was stayed, pending the outcome of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.[11]
In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in July 2006, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Bush Presidency lacked the constitutional authority to set up the military commissions. Only Congress had the authority to set up military commissions. Congress subsequently passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But,
On February 9, 2008 Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud Al Qosi and Ali Hamza Suleiman Al Bahlul were charged before the Congressionally authorized Guantanamo military commissions authorized by the Military Commissions Act of 2006.[12][13]
Ibrahim al Qosi was among those who was granted access to telephone privileges.
On May 22, 2008 Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Paul, the Presiding Officer of his Commission ordered, that Ibrahim al Qosi be permitted his first phone call home.[14][15] He has declined to leave his cell to meet with Commander Suzanne Lachelier his assigned legal counsel, and the Camp's security rules do not permit her going to his cell to talk to him—so they have never discussed his case. During a preliminary hearing Ibrahim Al Qosi told Paul he does not want to be represented by an American lawyer. He said that he had been unable to hire the lawyer of his choice because he had been isolated in Guantanamo, and had been unable to contact his family.
Later that day Commander Pauline Storum, a Guantanamo spokesman, reported that the call had been completed, and that he had spoken with his family for an hour.[14][16][17]
On May 23, 2008 Storum sent an apology by e-mail to reporters to retract her claim the phone call had been completed.[16][17]
|
Ibrahim Al Qosi's appointed counsel, Suzanne Lachelier, told Carol Rosenberg, of the Miami Herald, that she was surprised to learn, through press reports, that the call had been completed.[16] She said she had only begun to initiate the co-ordination with the Red Cross to arrange for his family to be set up to receive the call when she learned the call had already been completed. According to Rosenberg:
|
The Department of Defense had until July 1, 2008 to arrange the phone call.[17]
On July 15, 2009 Al Qosi had his first hearing in 2009.[18] According to Carol Rosenberg, writing in the Lakeland Ledger, the electronic audio management equipment the court had been supplied with in 2008 initially failed to function properly. Rosenberg reported that al Qosi's defense team was concerned that the Prosecution was imposing improper delays, and noted they told the Presiding Officer,
The Barack Obama Presidency was granted a continuance on October 21, 2009.[19] The military commissions for five other captives have been granted continuances, until November 16, 2009. Ibrahim al Qosi did not attend this hearing.
On December 3, 2009, Paul ruled that the charges against Al Qosi should be limited to crimes he was alleged to have committed in Afghanistan.[20][21] She ruled that crimes he was alleged to have committed when al Qaeda was based in Sudan were beyond the mandate of the military commission system.
Carol Rosenberg, writing in the Miami Herald, reported that Paul scheduled hearings for January 6, 2010, to determine whether Al Qosi met the eligibility criteria laid out in the Military Commissions Act of 2006.[22][23] Rosenberg described Paul as the first Presiding Officer of a Military Commission to address changes the US Congress set in place in the Military Commissions Act of 2009.
Andrea Prasow, a senior counsel with Human Rights Watch, was critical of Paul for proceeding with the Commission, even though the rules of procedure hadn't been drafted.[24]
On July 7, 2010, Al Qosi entered a guilty plea under a plea bargain deal, the details of which have not been publicly released, and his sentencing was set for August 9, 2010.[25][26] On August 11, 2010, a military jury at Guantanamo recommended that al-Qosi serve 14 years in prison.[27]
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||