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Binyam Mohamed al-Habashi is a 30-year-old Ethiopian who was granted political asylum in Britain in 1994. In 2002, he was arrested by Pakistani authorities who then handed him over to U.S. intelligence officials in co-operation with the US Government’s extraordinary renditions programme.

According to his testimony, Binyam had travelled voluntarily to Afghanistan in 2001 and spent some time there, probably several months, before crossing into Pakistan and seeking to return to the UK. He was arrested by Pakistani officials at Karachi Airport on 10 April 2002 for attempting to travel on a false passport.

The initial interrogations in Karachi involved Pakistani, American and British agents. Binyam was never accused of a particular crime and was told by MI6 agents that “they checked out my story and said they knew I was a nobody”. When he was discharged from Pakistani custody, however, he was not released. Instead, the Pakistani security services took him to a military airport in Islamabad and handed him over to the United States.

When Binyam was interrogated by American officials he asked for his right to a lawyer, and refused to answer questions, American officers told him: “The law has been changed. There are no lawyers. You can co-operate with us the easy way, or the hard way. If you don’t talk to us, you’re going to Jordan. We can’t do what we want here, the Pakistanis can’t do exactly what we want them to do. The Arabs will deal with you.”

Binyam was interrogated in Pakistan by the FBI and British SIS agents, he then underwent his first rendition on 21 July 2002 when he describes being set upon by unidentified people “dressed in black, with masks, wearing what looked like Timberland boots”. He describes how they “stripped him naked, took photos, put fingers up his anus and dressed him in a tracksuit. He was shackled, with earphones, and blindfolded”, before being forced onto an aircraft and flown to Morocco. Official flight records obtained by this inquiry show that the known rendition plane, N379P, took off from Islamabad on 21 July 2002 and flew to Rabat, Morocco.

202. Binyam testifies that when he underwent his first rendition on 21 July 2002. He was set upon by unidentified people “dressed in black, with masks, wearing what looked like Timberland boots”. He describes how they “stripped him naked, took photos, put fingers up his anus and dressed him in a tracksuit. He was shackled, with earphones, and blindfolded”, before being forced onto an aircraft and flown to Morocco. Official flight records obtained by this inquiry show that the known rendition plane, N379P, took off from Islamabad on 21 July 2002 and flew to Rabat, Morocco.

For more about the tracking of CIA ghost flights visit Applied autonomy

Binyam has described various secret detention facilities in which he was held in Morocco, including one prison that was submerged “almost underground” and one more sanitary place in which he was apparently placed to recover from injuries sustained from his torture. Between July 2002 and January 2004 Binyam was tortured on numerous occasions by a team of interrogators and other officials, most of whom were Moroccan. Some of the officials wore masks, while others did not; at least one interrogator, who identified herself as a Canadian, is thought to have been an American CIA agent.

Binyam’s description of his interrogation center in Morocco - a small group of houses, half sunken, surrounded by tall trees and a chain-link fence and withing forty-five minutes drive of the Rabat airport matches the description of the DGST centre in the small town of Temara, this secret prison is a hundred metres from the Route Nationale N1, the main road from Rabat.

Temara interrogation centre in Morroco was used to hold and torture other innocent victims of the illegal US rendition programme other victims who have been held and tortured here include Abou Elkassim Britel is an Italian citizen of Moroccan ethnicity, married to an Italian convert to Islam. On 10th March 2002, whilst in Lahore, Pakistan translating books on Islam, he was detained on a false passport charge, and subsequently interrogated and tortured by Pakistani security services. Transferred to Islamabad to be questioned by US intelligence agents, then on 24th May 2002, he was rendered to Morocco. More about Abou Elkassim Britel who remains imprisoned in Morocco here.

The Direction de la Securité du Territoire (DST), the Moroccan Secret Service, is under the control of the Minister of the Interior, Chakib Ben Moussa.

General Hamidou Lâanigri is the head of the Direction de la Securité du Territoire (DST).

Since 2005 the US has been helping Morocco to build a new interrogation and detention facility at Ain Aouda which will be run by the (DST), which is more evidence that Morocco is one of America’s principal partners in their secret “rendition” programme in which the CIA flies prisoners to third countries. The center should is spread over several hectares, with a central building and several annexes. The construction of the centre was overseen by architects appointed by the American CIA, its operations are essential to the CIA.

The object of the torture in Morocco was to break Binyam’s resistance, or to destroy him physically and psychologically, in order to extract confessions from him as to his involvement in terrorist activities. In addition to the sustained abuse and threats, the torturers used information, apparently obtained from intelligence sources, to indicate to Binyam that they knew a lot about him. Much of the personal information – including details of his education, his friendships in London and even his kickboxing trainer – could only have originated from collusion in this interrogation process by UK intelligence services. Since the purposes to which this information would be put were reasonably foreseeable, the provision of this information by the British Government amounts to complicity in Binyam’s detention and ill-treatment.

Binyam has described his ill-treatment in Morocco to his lawyer in several phases: an initial ’softening up’; a routine ’circle of torture’; and eventually a ’heavy’ abuse involving mental torment and the infliction of physical injury. In the first few weeks of his detention he was repeatedly suspended from the walls or ceilings, or otherwise shackled, and brutally beaten: “They came in and cuffed my hands behind my back. Then three men came in with black ski masks that only showed their eyes… One stood on each of my shoulders and the third punched me in the stomach. The first punch… turned everything inside me upside down. I felt I was going to vomit. I was meant to stand, but I was in so much pain I’d fall to my knees. They’d pull me back up and hit me again. They’d kick me in the thighs as I got up. They just beat me up that night… I collapsed and they left. I stayed on the ground for a long time before I lapsed into unconsciousness. My legs were dead. I could not move. I’d vomited and pissed on myself.”

At its worst, the torture involved stripping Binyam naked and using a doctor’s scalpel to make incisions all over his chest and other parts of his body: “One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once and they stood for a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony, crying, trying desperately to suppress myself, but I was screaming. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists.”

Eventually Binyam began to co-operate in his interrogation sessions in an effort to prevent being tortured: “They said if you say this story as we read it, you will just go to court as a witness and all this torture will stop. I could not take any more… and I eventually repeated what they read out to me. They told me to say I was with bin Laden five or six times. Of course that was false. They continued with two or three interrogations a month. They weren’t really interrogations – more like trainings, training me what to say.”

Binyam says he was subjected to a second rendition on the night from 21 to 22 January 2004. After being cuffed, blindfolded and driven for about 30 minutes in a van, he was offloaded at what he believes was an airport. Again, Binyam’s description matches the ‘methodology’ of rendition described earlier in this report: “They did not talk to me. They cut off my clothes. There was a white female with glasses – she took the pictures. One of them held my penis and she took digital pictures. When she saw the injuries I had, she gasped. She said: ‘oh my God, look at that’.”

On the 22 January 2004Binyam was flown from Rabat to Kabul on the CIA operated aircraft N313P, operated on behalf of the CIA, is shown in my official data to have in the early hours of. I regard this flight as an unlawful detainee transfer, transporting Binyam Mohamed from one secret detention facility to another. Two days later, as part of the same circuit, the same plane had flown back to Europe and was used in the rendition of Khaled El-Masri

Binyam Mohamed’s ordeal continued in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was held in the facility he refers to as “The Prison of Darkness”for four months. Detention conditions in this prison themselves amount to inhuman and degrading treatment. In addition, forced stress positions, sleep alteration, sensory deprivation and other recognised “enhanced interrogation techniques” are known to be deployed there routinely by the United States military and its partners. At various times, Binyam was chained to the floor with his arms suspended above his head, had his head knocked against the wall and describes “torture by music”, involving the sounds of loud rap and heavy metal, thunder, planes taking off, cackling laughter and horror sounds that amounted to a “perpetual nightmare”.

Binyam’s ordeal in Morocco continued for about 18 months until January 2004, when he was transferred to the ‘Dark Prison’ near Kabul, Afghanistan, a secret prison run by the CIA, which resembled a medieval dungeon with the addition of extremely loud 24-hour music and noise.

Speaking of his time in the ‘Dark Prison., Binyam said: “It was pitch black, no lights on in the rooms for most of the time. They hung me up for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb. There was loud music, Slim Shady and Dr. Dre for 20 days. Then they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds. At one point, I was chained to the rails for a fortnight. The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night. Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off.”

Descriptions of the ‘Dark Prison’ by former inmates make it sound like the nearest thing to hell on earth, they describe a darkness so thick they could not see their own hands, Bisher Al Rawi describes “some sort of satanic worship music.” Human Rights Watch organisation provides a summary of what little information is available about the ‘Dark Prison. here .

An Algerian named Laid Saidi who was rendered from Tanzania to Afghanistan recalls that he was taken to what he described as a “dark prison” filled with deafening Western music where the lights were rarely turned on and men in black shouting at him “You are in a place that is out of the world. No one knows where you are, no one is going to defend you.”

In their book ‘Torture Taxi’, investigative journalists Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson describe their searches in the area of Kabul for the likely location of the ‘Dark Prison’, possible locations include notorious ’salt pit’ prison for more information here

From the ‘Dark Prison’ Binyam was taken to the US military prison at Bagram airbase, and finally, in September 2004, to Guantánamo Bay, where he says that since then he was “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.

In June 2008, the US Department of Defense put Binyam forward for trial by military commission, a new military legal system for , conceived in November 2001, which was described by Lord Steyn, a British law lord, as a “kangaroo court.”

In the same month, lawyers at Reprieve, working with Leigh Day & Co., sued the British government, demanding that they turn over evidence that could help prove both his innocence and the extent of his torture.

In the recent high Court Judgement, on 4th February, 2009, in response to an application by the media for the publication of details of Binyam’s ill treatment and torture, the High Court held that details of Binyam Mohamed’s ill-treatment at the hands of the Americans and Pakistanis should not be published because the US authorities had threatened to withhold intelligence sharing with the UK. The Judges stated that they had been informed that this threat remained even after the change of administration in the US. They were deeply critical of this stance which undermined the rule of law solely for the purpose of preventing political embarrassment. However, the US threat to downgrade its intelligence relationship with the UK meant that it would threaten UK national security if those details were released.

The Judges decision was in line with the House of Lords’ judgment in the Serious Fraud Office case concerning Saudi Arabian threats to UK national security, the Court held that the US threats could not be dismissed, commenting “This judgment yet again makes clear the Court’s grave concerns about the US’s attempts to conceal its involvement in torture and rendition. Unfortunately, following the judgment by the House of Lords in the BAE-Saudi arms case, the Court considered itself powerless to overrule the British government’s decision to yield to a threat to national security thereby covering up international crimes and torture.”

However, the Judges did express the hope that these deeply disturbing events would be investigated by the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. They also approved of the fact that potential criminal proceedings against the UK security services were already being considered by the Attorney General. For more information see Amnesty International.

In an astonishing sequence of events following the judgment, the Foreign Secretary conceded that the new regime had not actually been approached, that in fact no threat had ever been made by the US. These admissions by the Foreign Secretary would seem to undermine the whole basis of the Court’s judgment refusing to publish those details, Benyam’s solicitors have made a further application to the Court requesting that the judgment is reopened and the case reconsidered in light of these new facts.

In a further curious twist to this case Benyam’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, sent a letter to President Obama through the Defence Department detailing “truly medieval” abuse inflicted on Benyam Mohamed, but says that that much of the letter was blacked out, preventing the president from reading it.

csslettertoobama

In the letter to the president, Stafford Smith urges Obama to be aware of the “bizarre reality” of the situation. “You, as commander in chief, are being denied access to material that would help prove that crimes have been committed by U.S. personnel. This decision is being made by the very people who you command.”

Binyam Mohamed has recently appealed a separate U.S. case, on behalf of himself and four other terror suspects, to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, in that case, government lawyers from the Obama administration sought a decision not to reinstate a case that was thrown out by a lower court last year because government lawyers argued successfully that allowing the case to go forward would jeopardise U.S. national security.

In opposing reinstatement of the case, Obama’s lawyers used the same “state secrets” privilege used by Bush lawyers in the original case. The appeals court has not yet ruled in the case, which charges that a subsidiary of the Boeing Company, Jeppesen Dataplan, knowingly provided aircraft and logistical services to facilitate the Central Intelligence Agency’s rendition of Mohamed to overseas prisons where he was tortured.

The letter and its blacked-out attachment were disclosed as two high court judges agreed to reopen the court case in which Mohamed’s lawyers, the Guardian newspaper and other media are seeking disclosure of evidence of alleged torture against him.

binyam-mohamed-submissions-5-2-09-2

Binyam Mohamed’s lawyers are challenging the judges’ gagging order, claiming that David Miliband, the foreign secretary, changed his evidence. The attachment is titled “Re: Torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed by US personnel.” The entire body of the memo and the name of its recipient are also redacted.

In their recent High Court judgment British Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Lloyd Jones stated repeatedly that Secretary Miliband claimed the U.S. had threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Britain if information relating to Mohamed’s alleged torture was disclosed. Miliband subsequently denied the U.S. had applied such pressure, but a U.S. State Department spokesperson thanked the British government for respecting the confidentiality of shared intelligence. The British case will be reopened next month.

Stafford Smith’s letter to Obama says: “I am writing with great urgency concerning the rendition and torture of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner represented by our charity. His name is Binyam Mohamed, and he is a British resident.”

“You will doubtless have been informed about Mr. Mohamed’s torture - he was abused in truly medieval ways over a period of more than two years in Pakistan (at the behest of the U.S.), then again in Morocco (where he had been rendered by the CIA), and then in the Dark Prison in Kabul. There has been a firestorm in the media of our closest ally, the United Kingdom because, according to two British judges, the Bush Administration ‘threatened’ to withdraw national security cooperation with the UK if the judges ordered the release of materials concerning the torture of Mr. Mohamed in U.S. custody.”

“The British judges bowed to this ‘threat’- but suggested at the end of their Judgment that your administration might reconsider the position taken by your predecessors….

“Since we, at Reprieve, are U.S. lawyers with appropriate security clearances, we have access to this classified material. We have therefore assembled a memorandum that collates the evidence of torture in question. It is attached…for now, to deal with the British judges’ request, we are submitting this information to you with no reference to any agent’s name, or even the location of the abuse. Thus, as the British judges suggested, there is nothing in the memo that divulges material that should be considered classified.”

“We are submitting this letter and attachment to the Privilege Review Team established by the Department of Defense to deal with these issues…If the DOD is unwilling to forward this material to you, then we will send you only what we are allowed to send you - which will be a copy of this letter and a redacted version of the memo illustrating the extent to which it has been censored.”

Earlier, Mohamed’s U.S.-appointed military lawyer, Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley, told a press conference that his treatment “would make waterboarding seem like child’s play”.

The Guardian newspaper reported that Stafford Smith and his military lawyer last week met in private with members of the British intelligence and security committee, the group of MPs and peers facing mounting criticism in Westminster over claims it failed to effectively scrutinise the activities of MI5, the British intelligence agency.

Stafford Smith said he told the committee it would have been “absolutely impossible” for it to have cleared MI5 of involvement in the torture of Mohamed had it seen 42 key documents in the case - as he has - that Miliband says cannot be released for reasons of national security.

Binyam has been scheduled for release from Guantanamo shortly, has been on a hunger strike for the past month, and he is reported to be close to death, but has been declared fit to travel by doctors should US President Barack Obama clear the way for his release, on February 17, 2009.Protesters gathered outside the US Embassy in London, England to call for the release of the former UK resident.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 2:10 am and is filed under The Dark War on Terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.