| Hassan Muhammad Salih bin Attash | |
|---|---|
 Hassan bin Attash, wearing anorange uniform issued tonon-compliant individuals | |
| Born | 1985 (age 39–40)[1][2] Jeddah,Saudi Arabia |
| Arrested | September 11, 2002 Karachi Pakistani security officials,CIA |
| Citizenship | Saudi Arabia |
| Detained at | Guantanamo, previously held in "the dark prison" |
| Other name(s) | Hassan Muhammad Ali Bin Attash |
| ISN | 1456 |
| Charge(s) | Extrajudicial detention |
| Status | Released |
| Occupation | student |
Hassan Muhammad Salih bin Attash (Arabic:حسن محمد علي بن عطاش) is a citizen ofSaudi Arabia who was held by theUnited States in theGuantanamo Bay detention camp inCuba.[3]Joint Task Force Guantanamocounter-terrorism analysts estimate that bin Attash was born in 1985, inJeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Hassan Muhammad Salih bin Attash was held at Guantanamo for 20 years.[4]
Attash was seventeen years old when he was captured.[5][6]Hassan is the brother ofWalid bin Attash, who has also been described as aninmate in theCIA's network of secret prisons.[7] Hassan, too, claims he spent time in the other prisons, including "the dark prison", prior to being detained inGuantanamo Bay,Cuba.[8]
The circumstances of Hassan bin Attash have triggered the attention of several human rights organizations, includingAmnesty International,Reprieve andHuman Rights Watch.[7][9][10][11]According to their accounts Hassan bin Attash was captured on September 10, 2002, spent time inthe dark prison, spent sixteen months inJordan, 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.
TheBoston Globe quoted Guantanamo spokesmenLieutenant commanderChito Peppler, who insisted,"US policy requires all detainees to be treated humanely,"[11]
Peppler repeated the assertion that none of the captive's assertions of abuse were credible because al-Qaeda trained operatives to lie about abuse.[11]
Human Rights groupReprieve reports that flight records show two captives namedAl-Sharqawi and Hassan bin Attash were flown from Kabul in September 2002.The two men were flown aboardN379P, a plane suspected to be part of the CIA's ghost fleet.Flight records showed that the plane originally departed fromDiego Garcia, stopped inMorocco,Portugal, then Kabul before landing inGuantánamo Bay.[12]
Originally theBushPresidency asserted that captives apprehended in the"war on terror" were not covered by theGeneva Conventions, and could be held indefinitely, without charge, and without an open and transparent review of the justifications for their detention.[13]In 2004 theUnited States Supreme Court ruled, inRasul v. Bush, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being informed of the allegations justifying their detention, and were entitled to try to refute them.
Following the Supreme Court's ruling theDepartment of Defense set up theOffice for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants.[13][16]
Scholars at theBrookings Institution, led byBenjamin Wittes, listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention was justified by certain common allegations:[17]
A writ ofhabeas corpus was filed on behalf of Bin Attash.[18]
On January 21, 2009, the day he was inaugurated,United States PresidentBarack Obama issued threeexecutive orders related to the detention of individuals inGuantanamo Bay detention camp.[19][20][21][22] 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, theGuantanamo Review Task Force 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 aFreedom of Information Act request.[23]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 aPeriodic Review Board.
The first review wasn't convened until November 20, 2013.[24] As of 15 April 2016[update], 29 individuals had reviews, but Hassan bin Attash wasn't one of them. Bin Attash was approved for transfer on April 13, 2022.[25]
Bin Attash and 10 other detainees were transferred toOman on January 6, 2025.[26]
Flight plan records show that one of the aircraft, registered N379P, flew in September 2002 from Diego Garcia to Morocco. From there it flew to Portugal and then to Kabul. Passenger names have been blacked out. However, Reprieve, which represents prisoners faced with the death penalty and torture, said that in Kabul the aircraft picked up Al-Sharqawi and Hassan bin Attash, two suspects who were tortured in Jordan before being rendered to Afghanistan and flown to Guantánamo Bay. Those rendered through Diego Garcia remain unidentified. In a letter to Miliband, Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said: 'It is certainly not going to rebuild public confidence if we say that two people were illegally taken through British territory but then refuse to reveal the fates of these men.'
Critics called it an overdue acknowledgment that the so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals are unfairly geared toward labeling detainees the enemy, even when they pose little danger. Simply redoing the tribunals won't fix the problem, they said, because the system still allows coerced evidence and denies detainees legal representation.
I have already discussed at length the profound injustice of holding Shawali Khan and Abdul Ghani, in articles here and here, and noted how their cases discredit America, as Khan, against whom no evidence of wrongdoing exists, nevertheless had his habeas corpus petition denied, and Ghani, a thoroughly insignificant scrap metal merchant, was put forward for a trial by military commission — a war crimes trial — under President Bush.