Hassan Muhammad Salih bin Attash ( ar, حسن محمد علي بن عطاش) is a citizen of

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...

, held by the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in the

Guantanamo Bay detention camp The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

Joint Task Force Guantanamo Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) is a U.S. military joint task force based at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba on the southeastern end of the base. JTF-GTMO falls under US Southern Command. Since January 2002 the command has ...

counter-terrorism Counterterrorism (also spelled counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, incorporates the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, business, and intelligence agencies use to combat or el ...

analysts estimate that bin Attash was born in 1985, in

Jeddah Jeddah ( ), also spelled Jedda, Jiddah or Jidda ( ; ar, , Jidda, ), is a city in the Hejaz region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the country's commercial center. Established in the 6th century BC as a fishing village, Jeddah's pro ...

, Saudi Arabia. As of January 2020, Hassan Muhammad Salih bin Attash has been held at Guantanamo for over fifteen years. Attash was seventeen years old when he was captured.Kids of Guantanamo
, '' cageprisoners.com, June 15, 2005 Hassan is the brother of

Walid bin Attash Walid Muhammad Salih bin Mubarak bin Attash ( ar, وليد محمد صالح بن مبارك بن عتش; born 1978) is a Yemeni prisoner held in extrajudicial detention at the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camp and is suspected of pla ...

, who has also been described as an

inmate A prisoner (also known as an inmate or detainee) is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement, captivity, or forcible restraint. The term applies particularly to serving a prison sentence in a prison. ...

in the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

's network of secret prisons.List of “Ghost Prisoners” Possibly in CIA Custody
''

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...

'', December 1, 2005 Hassan, too, claims he spent time in the other prisons, including "

the dark prison The Salt Pit and Cobalt are the code names of an isolated clandestine CIA black site prison and interrogation center outside Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. It is located north of Kabul and was the location of a brick factory prior to the A ...

", prior to being detained in Guantanamo Bay,

.U.S. Operated Secret 'Dark Prison' in Kabul
''

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...

'', December 19, 2005

Human Rights Concern

The circumstances of Hassan bin Attash have triggered the attention of several human rights organizations, including

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

, Reprieve and

.Guantánamo: pain and distress for thousands of children
''

'' Reprieve uncovers evidence indicating German territory may have been used in rendition and abuse
, '' Reprieve'', October 10, 2006 7 detainees report transfer to nations that use torture
''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'', April 26, 2006 According to their accounts Hassan bin Attash was captured on September 10, 2002, spent time in

, spent sixteen months in

Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

, 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 ''

'' quoted Guantanamo spokesmen

Lieutenant commander Lieutenant commander (also hyphenated lieutenant-commander and abbreviated Lt Cdr, LtCdr. or LCDR) is a commissioned officer rank in many navies. The rank is superior to a lieutenant and subordinate to a commander. The corresponding rank i ...

Chito Peppler, who insisted, ''"US policy requires all detainees to be treated humanely,"'' Peppler repeated the assertion that none of the captive's assertions of abuse were credible because al-Qaeda trained operatives to lie about abuse.

Transportation to Guantanamo Bay

Human Rights group Reprieve reports that flight records show two captives named Al-Sharqawi and Hassan bin Attash were flown from Kabul in September 2002. The two men were flown aboard

N379P This page describes several aircraft that are alleged in media reports to have been used in the practice of extraordinary rendition, the extralegal transfer of prisoners from one country to another. N313P N313P was a tailnumber assigned to a Boe ...

, a plane suspected to be part of the CIA's ghost fleet. Flight records showed that the plane originally departed from

Diego Garcia Diego Garcia is an island of the British Indian Ocean Territory, a disputed overseas territory of the United Kingdom. It is a militarised atoll just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, and the largest of the 60 small islands o ...

, stopped in

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

, then Kabul before landing in

Guantánamo Bay Guantánamo Bay ( es, Bahía de Guantánamo) is a bay in Guantánamo Province at the southeastern end of Cuba. It is the largest harbor on the south side of the island and it is surrounded by steep hills which create an enclave that is cut off ...

Official status reviews

Originally the

Bush Bush commonly refers to: * Shrub, a small or medium woody plant Bush, Bushes, or the bush may also refer to: People * Bush (surname), including any of several people with that name **Bush family, a prominent American family that includes: *** ...

Presidency A presidency is an administration or the executive, the collective administrative and governmental entity that exists around an office of president of a state or nation. Although often the executive branch of government, and often personified by a ...

asserted that captives apprehended in the ''"

war on terror The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international Counterterrorism, counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campa ...

"'' were not covered by the

Geneva Conventions upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864 The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conven ...

, and could be held indefinitely, without charge, and without an open and transparent review of the justifications for their detention. In 2004 the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

ruled, in

Rasul v. Bush ''Rasul v. Bush'', 542 U.S. 466 (2004), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that foreign nationals held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp could petition federal courts for writs of ''habeas corpus ...

, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being informed of the allegations justifying their detention, and were entitled to try to refute them.

Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants

Following the Supreme Court's ruling the

Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philipp ...

set up the

Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants The Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants, established in 2004 by the Bush administration's Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, is a United States military body responsible for organising Combatant St ...

. Scholars 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 ...

, led by

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 ...

, listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention was justified by certain common allegations: * Hassan Muhammad Salih Bin Attash was listed as one of the captives who ... * Hassan Muhammad Salih Bin Attash was listed as one of the captives who ''"The military alleges ... traveled to Afghanistan for jihad."'' * Hassan Muhammad Salih Bin Attash was listed as one of the captives who ''"The military alleges that the following detainees stayed in Al Qaeda, Taliban or other guest- or safehouses."'' * Hassan Muhammad Salih Bin Attash was listed as one of the captives who ''"The military alleges ... took military or terrorist training in Afghanistan."'' * Hassan Muhammad Salih Bin Attash was listed as one of the captives who ''"The military alleges that the following detainees were captured under circumstances that strongly suggest belligerency."'' * Hassan Muhammad Salih Bin Attash was listed as one of the captives who was an ''"al Qaeda operative"''. * Hassan Muhammad Salih Bin Attash was listed as one of the ''"82 detainees made no statement to CSRT or ARB tribunals or made statements that do not bear materially on the military's allegations against them."''

Habeas corpus

A writ of

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...

was filed on behalf of Bin Attash.

Joint Review Task Force

On January 21, 2009, the day he was inaugurated,

United States President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United State ...

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

issued three

executive order In the United States, an executive order is a directive by the president of the United States that manages operations of the federal government. The legal or constitutional basis for executive orders has multiple sources. Article Two of th ...

s related to the detention of individuals in

. That new review system was composed of officials from six departments, where the OARDEC reviews were conducted entirely by the Department of Defense. When it reported back, a year later, the

Guantanamo Review Task Force The Guantanamo Review Task Force was created by Executive Order 13492 issued by President of the United States Barack Obama on January 22, 2009, his second full day in office. United States Attorney General Eric Holder announced Matthew G. Olsen ...

classified some individuals as too dangerous to be transferred from Guantanamo, even though there was insufficient evidence to justify charging them. On April 9, 2013, that document was made public after a

Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request: * Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act * ...

request. Hassan bin Attash was one of the 71 individuals deemed unable to be charged due to insufficient evidence, but too dangerous to release. Obama said those deemed unable to be charged due to insufficient evidence, but too dangerous to release would start to receive reviews from a

Periodic Review Board The Periodic Review Boards administrate a US ''"administrative procedure"'' for recommending whether certain individuals held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba are safe to release or transfer, or whether they should continue to be held ...

Periodic Review Board

The first review wasn't convened until November 20, 2013. , 29 individuals had reviews, but Hassan bin Attash wasn't one of them. Bin Attash was approved for transfer on April 13, 2022.

References

External links

The Pentagon Can’t Count: 22 Juveniles Held at Guantánamo
Andy Worthington
UN Secret Detention Report (Part Three): Proxy Detention, Other Countries’ Complicity, and Obama’s Record
Andy Worthington {{DEFAULTSORT:Attash, Hassan Mohammed Ali Bin People from Jeddah People subject to extraordinary rendition by the United States Juveniles held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp Saudi Arabian torture victims Living people Year of birth missing (living people)