Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...

is understood to have operated a number of

safe house A safe house (also spelled safehouse) is, in a generic sense, a secret place for sanctuary or suitable to hide people from the law, hostile actors or actions, or from retribution, threats or perceived danger. It may also be a metaphor. Histori ...

s, some of which were used as training centres.

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

intelligence analysts Intelligence analysis is the application of individual and collective cognitive methods to weigh data and test hypotheses within a secret socio-cultural context. The descriptions are drawn from what may only be available in the form of deliberate ...

justified the

extrajudicial detention Administrative detention is arrest and detention of individuals by the state without trial. A number of jurisdictions claim that it is done for security reasons. Many countries claim to use administrative detention as a means to combat terrorism ...

of some Guantanamo suspects because they stayed in what they characterized as an Al Qaeda safe house. American intelligence analysts also justify the detention of suspects who stayed in an Al Qaeda guest house, a Taliban safe house or a Taliban guest house. In the first Seton Hall report,

Mark Denbeaux Mark P. Denbeaux (born July 30, 1943 in Gainesville, Florida) is an American attorney, professor, and author. He is a law professor at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey and the Director of its Center for Policy and Research ...

writes that guest houses and/or safe houses are mentioned in the evidence against 27% of detainees. Denbeaux states that "In the region, the term guest house refers simply to a form of travel accommodation" and "Stopping at such facilities is common for all people traveling in the area." A response to that report written by

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...

Combating Terrorism Center The Combating Terrorism Center is an academic institution at the United States Military Academy (USMA) in West Point, New York that provides education, research and policy analysis in the specialty areas of terrorism, counterterrorism, homelan ...

argued that "the Seton Hall report inaccurately defines the term ‘safe-house’ – a well-known tool leveraged by criminals and terrorists to facilitate discreet movement of associates – as an innocuous residence used by American tourists and travel agencies." Denbeaux responded that the Seton Hall study had "used the Department of Defense’s terms objectively and accepted their plain meanings" and that "West Point does not provide any basis for equating guest houses and safe houses other than the obvious problem with detaining an individual in part based on his stay in a 'guest' house."Cageprisoners.com
/ref> The CTC report states that:

Safe-houses, sometimes referred to as ‘guest-houses,’ facilitate an individual’s ability to discreetly ''(sic)'' transit from one location to another by providing them with a place to spend the night, acquire resources, obtain false documentation or secure modes of transportation. Organized crime syndicates, terrorist networks and traffickers all rely on safe-houses to move people from place-to-place. They may be houses, apartments, mosques, stores, refugee camps, barracks, or any other type of infrastructure that houses individuals involved in nefarious activities. Al-Qa`ida, the Taliban and their associates have leveraged the safe-house network to great ends, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many of these houses and apartments, which had been run for the specific purpose of ensuring safe passage for associates of those movements, have been identified by the United States in its ongoing counterterrorism operations.

Benjamin Wittes Benjamin Wittes (born November 5, 1969) is an American legal journalist and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he is the Research Director in Public Law, and Co-Director of the Harvard Law School–Brookings ...

and his colleagues at the

Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in ec ...

noted in January 2010 that different judges reviewing the habeas petitions for different Guantanamo captives had reached conflicting conclusions on the common issue of whether an alleged stay in a suspect guest house indicated terrorist affiliation strongly enough to justify continued detention. Wittes and his colleagues, in their analysis of the documents from the first 558 Combatant Status Review Tribunals, reported that continued detention was found justified for 130 Guantanamo captives at least in part because they ''"stayed in Al Qaeda, Taliban, or other guest- or safehouses."'' Joseph Felter and his colleagues, in ''"An Assessment of 516 Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) Unclassified Summaries"'', found that 24 percent of the Summary of Evidence memos, or 122 of the 516 they analyzed, justified the continued detention of a captive due to claims of stays in a suspicious guest house or safe house.

References

{{Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda facilities Safe houses in Pakistan