Binyam Ahmed Mohammad

Binyam Ahmed Mohammad is a citizen of Ethiopia who .was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internee Security Number is 1458. He was born in 24 July 1978. Benyam had legal permission to reside in the United Kingdom, where he had been a long-term resident.

He was initially alleged to have conspired with Jose Padilla]] in a plot to explode dirty bombs in the USA. Even after US civilian Prosecutors decided not to charge Padilla the dirty bomb plot was the most serious charge Benyam faced before a Guantanamo military commission.

On 15 October 2008 Guantanamo Prosecutors dropped the dirty bomb charge.

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 Tribunals. 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.

Summary of Evidence memo
A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for his Tribunal. It listed the following allegations:
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 * '''a. The detainee is associated with al Qaida or the Taliban.
 * The detainee is an Ethiopian who lived in the United States from 1992 to 1994, and in London, United Kingdom, until he departed for Pakistan in 2001.
 * The detainee arrived in Islamabad, Pakistan, in June 2001, and traveled to the al Faruq training camp in Afghanistan, to receive paramilitary training.
 * At the al Faruq camp, the detainee received 40 days of training in light arms handling, explosives, and principles of topography.
 * The detainee was taught to falsify documents, and received instruction from a senior al Qaida operative on how to encode telephone numbers before passing them to another individual.
 * The detainee proposed, to senior-al Qaida leaders, the idea of attacking subway trains in the United States.
 * The detainee was extracted from Afghanistan to Karachi, Pakistan, where he received explosives and remote-controlled-detonator training from an al Qaida operative.
 * The detainee met with an al Qaida operative and was directed to travel to the United States to assist in terrorist operations.
 * The detainee attempted to leave Pakistan for the United States but was detained and interrogated by Pakistani authorities, revealing his membership in al Qaida, the identities of Mujahidins he knew, and his plan to use a "dirty bomb" [sic] to carry out a terrorist attack in the United States.
 * The detainee attempted to leave Pakistan for the United States but was detained and interrogated by Pakistani authorities, revealing his membership in al Qaida, the identities of Mujahidins he knew, and his plan to use a "dirty bomb" [sic] to carry out a terrorist attack in the United States.


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Charges
Binyam was charged twice. On 2005 November 7 he faced charges before the first, Presidentially authorized military commissions.

In July 2006, the United States Supreme Court's ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the constitutional authority to order Military Commissions. It ruled that the United States Congress, on the other hand, did have the authority to order Military Commissions.

In the fall of 2006 Congress passed the Military Commission Act, authorizing military commissions similar to the original Presidentially authorized Commissions.

In the winter of 2008 Binyam faced a new, different set of charges before the Congressionally authorized Commissions.

Extraordinary rendition, CIA custody, Torture allegations
Binyam's attorneys report that he had been subjected to "extraordinary rendition", 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 Guantanamo in 2004.