Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, an Ethiopian, trained as an electrical engineer in the United Kingdom, where he had been granted refugee status.
Mohamed was arrested by Pakistani authorities at the airport in Karachi in April 2002. He claims that he was handed over to the United States, then rendered to Morocco, where he was beaten, repeatedly cut on his genitals and threatened with rape, electrocution and death. He says that he was eventually taken to secret prison in Afghanistan known as the "dark prison" before being transferred to Bagram Air Base and then flown to Guantanamo in September 2004. Along with several other alleged victims of rendition, Mohamed filed a lawsuit against the Boeing subsidiary that they believe was responsible for providing the aircraft used in CIA rendition flights. The federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., ruled that the government's assertion of the state secrets privilege allowed the government to withhold certain information essential to the case in discovery, and as a result, barred litigation from proceeding in its entirety.
Mohamed was first charged before a military commission in 2005, but that case ended in 2006 when the US Supreme Court struck down President Bush's original system of military commissions.
On May 30, 2008, the United States charged Mohamed with conspiracy to commit terrorism and providing material support for terrorism. Specifically, the government alleged that after traveling to Afghanistan in early summer 2001 to attend a terrorist training camp where he learned how to use a variety of weapons, Mohamed planned to travel to the United States to conduct terrorist attacks. The US government alleged that he later traveled to Pakistan and worked with Al-Qaeda operatives, including Jose Padilla, who was subsequently convicted in US courts of providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy to "murder, kidnap and maim" people overseas.
However, on October 21, 2008, following the resignation of one of the prosecutors on the case, the United States withdrew the charges against Mohamed and four others. Although the US said at the time that it would likely file new charges, it never did so. On February 23, 2009, Mohammed was released to the United Kingdom. (Last updated May 1, 2014)
