Detention of Ayub Ali Khan and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath

Last updated
Mohammed Jaweed Azmath
Bornc. 1970 (age 53–54)
India
Ayub Ali Khan
Born
Gul Mohammed Shah

c. 1970 (age 53–54)
India
SpouseTasleem Murad

Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan (also known as Syed Gul Mohamed Shah) are two Indian men who were wrongly accused of involvement in the September 11 terrorist attacks. [1] [2]

Contents

Detention

One day after the September 11th attacks, the men were detained in Texas for possible immigration violations. Their apartment in Jersey City was searched the following weekend. According to The Washington Post , writing one week after the attacks, "Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, 47, and Ayub Ali Khan, 51, both from India, were taken into custody Wednesday on an Amtrak train in Texas, carrying $5,000 in cash, hair dye and box cutter knives -- weapons said to have been used by the hijackers." [3] The subjects were profiled as potential drug smugglers because they purchased train tickets with cash immediately before departure, and appeared nervous when questioned. [4]

As of October 25, 2001, the men were being held in New York as material witnesses. [5] Investigators said they had offered Azmath, Khan, Zacarias Moussaoui and Nabil al-Marabh "the prospect of reduced sentences, money, jobs and new identities within the US" if they assisted investigation into the attacks, while threatening to inject them with a "truth serum", identified as sodium pentothal, or to transfer them to countries with more brutal interrogation techniques. [6] (see also torture by proxy, extraordinary rendition) The four men were cited by a number of media pundits raising discussion of whether torture should be practiced within the United States, and whether it would be effective. [7] [8]

In December 2001, The New York Times reported that 'three months of intensive investigation' had failed to link the men with the attack. The men's circumstance appeared to be coincidence - they had lost their employment managing news stands in Newark, and were relocating to Texas to open or work at a fruit stand. They had used box cutters to open bundles of newspapers. After their flight to San Antonio was stopped in St. Louis after the attacks, they boarded a train to complete the trip, which was stopped for a "routine drug search". [2]

Though cleared of involvement in the attacks, prosecutors charged them with an unrelated case of "fraud involving several hundred thousand dollars of unpaid credit card charges." [2] The men made a plea bargain, as arguing for their innocence would have left them in jail much longer than confessing their guilt. [9] They had agreed afterward to be deported for immigration violations. [2]

Both men alleged ill-treatment in custody, the first 12 months of which they spent in solitary confinement. According to Azmath, "I was made to stand in freezing temperatures in the open for four to five hours a day to force me to confess to a crime I had not committed." According to Khan's lawyer, each time he was brought to court he was thrown, while shackled, against a wall. After reaching India they filed suit against the United States. [9]

Aftermath

Following their deportation, both men were charged in India with passport violations. [9] According to the Times of India , the men were accused of obtaining fake passports from a corrupt passport agent, and Khan's true name was Gul Mohammed Shah, and Azmath had listed his age as 50 rather than 30. The Times reported that Azmath's wife, Tasleem Murad, had told them that he was not the first person to misstate his age to obtain a visa and "He did not have any evil intentions and he has paid for it already." [10] An additional issue was that Azmath's wife, being Pakistani, did not have Indian citizenship. [9]

The 2002 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting [11] was awarded to a September 29 article in The Washington Post by Dan Eggen and Bob Woodward, which mentioned the detention of Khan and Azmath and reported that an anonymous source said that "Both men had flight training". [12]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khalid al-Mihdhar</span> Saudi terrorist and 9/11 hijacker (1975–2001)

Khalid Muhammad Abdallah al-Mihdhar was a Saudi terrorist hijacker. He was one of the five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon as part of the 11 September attacks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">U.S. government response to the September 11 attacks</span> Government actions

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States government responded by commencing immediate rescue operations at the World Trade Center site, grounding civilian aircraft, and beginning a long-term response that included official investigations, legislative changes, military action, and restoration projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Truth serum</span> Class of psychoactive drug

"Truth serum" is a colloquial name for any of a range of psychoactive drugs used in an effort to obtain information from subjects who are unable or unwilling to provide it otherwise. These include ethanol, scopolamine, 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, midazolam, flunitrazepam, sodium thiopental, and amobarbital, among others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waterboarding</span> Torture method simulating drowning

Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboarding, the captive's face is covered with cloth or some other thin material and immobilized on their back at an incline of 10 to 20 degrees. Torturers pour water onto the face over the breathing passages, causing an almost immediate gag reflex and creating a drowning sensation for the captive. Normally, water is poured intermittently to prevent death; however, if the water is poured uninterruptedly it will lead to death by asphyxia. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, and lasting psychological damage. Adverse physical effects can last for months, and psychological effects for years. The term "water board torture" appeared in press reports as early as 1976.

In American criminal law, a material witness is a person with information alleged to be material concerning a criminal proceeding. The authority to detain material witnesses dates to the First Judiciary Act of 1789, but the Bail Reform Act of 1984 most recently amended the text of the statute, and it is now codified at 18 U.S.C. § 3144. The most recent version allows material witnesses to be held to ensure the giving of their testimony in criminal proceedings or to a grand jury.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mohamedou Ould Slahi</span> Mauritanian author and former Guantanamo Bay detainee

Mohamedou Ould Slahi is a Mauritanian engineer who was detained at Guantánamo Bay detention camp without charge from 2002 until his release on October 17, 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri</span> Alleged al-Qaeda mastermind

Abd al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Abdu al-Nashiri is a Saudi Arabian citizen alleged to be the mastermind of the bombing of USS Cole and other maritime attacks. He is alleged to have headed al-Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf states prior to his capture in November 2002 by the CIA's Special Activities Division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extraordinary rendition</span> State-sponsored abduction and transfer to a third country

Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored kidnapping in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had the purpose of circumventing the source country's laws on interrogation, detention, extradition and/or torture. Extraordinary rendition is a type of extraterritorial abduction, but not all extraterritorial abductions include transfer to a third country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Binyam Mohamed</span> Ethiopian Guantanamo detainee

Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, also referred to as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam Mohammed or Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi, is an Ethiopian national and United Kingdom resident, who was detained as a suspected enemy combatant by the US Government in Guantanamo Bay prison between 2004 and 2009 without charges. He was arrested in Pakistan and transported first to Morocco under the US's extraordinary rendition program, where he claimed to have been interrogated under torture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dilawar (torture victim)</span> Afghan torture victim

Dilawar, also known as Dilawar of Yakubi, was an Afghan farmer and taxi driver who was tortured to death by US Army soldiers at the Bagram Collection Point, a US military detention center in Afghanistan.

Khaled El-Masri is a German and Lebanese citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police in 2003, and handed over to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While in CIA custody, he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was held at a black site and routinely interrogated, beaten, strip-searched, sodomized, and subjected to other cruel forms of inhumane and degrading treatment and torture. After El-Masri held hunger strikes, and was detained for four months in the "Salt Pit", the CIA finally admitted his arrest was a mistake and released him. He is believed to be among an estimated 3,000 detainees, including several key leaders of al Qaeda, whom the CIA captured from 2001 to 2005, in its campaign to dismantle terrorist networks.

Majid Shoukat Khan is a Pakistani who was the only known legal resident of the United States held in the Guantanamo Bay Detainment Camp. He was a "high value detainee" subject to “enhanced interrogation” by the U.S. intelligence forces.

Pacha Khan Zadran is a militia leader and a politician in the southeast of Afghanistan. He was a former anti-Soviet fighter and militia leader who played a role in driving the Taliban from Paktia Province in the 2001 invasion, with American backing. He subsequently assumed the governorship of the province. In 2002, he engaged in a violent conflict with rival tribal leaders in the province over the Governorship of the province, shelling Gardez City and obstructing two separate appointed governors sent by Hamid Karzai.

<i>United States v. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed</i>

United States v. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, et al. is the trial of five alleged al-Qaeda members for aiding the September 11, 2001 attacks. Charges were announced by Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann on February 11, 2008 at a press conference hosted by the Pentagon. The men charged are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ammar al-Baluchi, and Mustafa Ahmad al Hawsawi.

This page lists trials related to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Attribution of the 2008 Mumbai attacks were first made by the Indian authorities who said that the Mumbai attacks were directed by Lashkar-e-Taiba militants inside Pakistan. American intelligence agencies also agree with this attribution. Pakistan initially contested this attribution, but agreed this was the case on 7 January 2009. To back up its accusations, the Indian government supplied a dossier to Pakistan's high commission in Delhi. The Pakistan government dismissed the dossier as "not evidence," but also announced that it had detained over a hundred members of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a charity linked with Lashkar-e-Taiba. In February 2009, Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik agreed that "some part of the conspiracy" did take place in Pakistan.

Soon after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States Government began detaining people who fit the profile of the suspected hijackers: mostly male, Arabic, or Muslim noncitizens. According to Justice Berman, they had arrested 1,182 people as of November 5, 2001. By late November 2001, more than 1,200 people had been detained. A document made and published by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) contained information about the detainees.

The D.C. Five is a group of Muslim Americans from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., with suspected ties to terrorism. The five men were detained on December 9, 2009, during a police raid in Pakistan on a house with links to a militant group. In part of an increasing trend in homegrown terrorism, they were in their late teens or early twenties.

The Guantánamo Bay files leak began on 24 April 2011, when WikiLeaks, along with The New York Times, NPR and The Guardian and other independent news organizations, began publishing 779 formerly secret documents relating to detainees at the United States' Guantánamo Bay detention camp established in 2002 after its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The documents consist of classified assessments, interviews, and internal memos about detainees, which were written by the Pentagon's Joint Task Force Guantanamo, headquartered at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. The documents are marked "secret" and NOFORN.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John A. Rizzo</span> American attorney (1947–2021)

John Anthony Rizzo was an American attorney who worked as a lawyer in the Central Intelligence Agency for 34 years. He was the deputy counsel or acting general counsel of the CIA for the first nine years of the War on Terror, during which the CIA held dozens of detainees in black site prisons around the globe.

References

  1. ↑ "New Jersey men to be arraigned for credit card fraud - CNN". Articles.cnn.com. 2002-01-16. Retrieved 2012-05-17.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Christopher Drew and William K. Rashbaum (2001-12-13). "A NATION CHALLENGED - THE DETAINEES - A NATION CHALLENGED - THE DETAINEES - 2 Suspects Found on Train Probably Are Not Linked to Attack, Officials Say". The New York Times . New York City; Texas; Jersey City (Nj); Washington (Dc). Retrieved 2012-05-17.
  3. ↑ Serge F. Kovaleski and Fredrick Kunkle (2001-11-18). "Northern New Jersey Draws Probers' Eyes". The Washington Post.
  4. ↑ Jack Douglas Jr (2001-10-25). "US TX: Pair On Train Were Initially Drug Suspects". Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
  5. ↑ Karen Gullo (2001-10-25). "Ashcroft Discusses New Powers". Associated Press/Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2013-05-18.
  6. ↑ "US investigators consider resorting to 'truth serum'". New Zealand Herald. October 23, 2001.
  7. ↑ David Walsh (10 November 2001). "US liberal pundits debate the value of torture".
  8. ↑ Jonathan Alter (November 4, 2001). "Time To Think About Torture". Newsweek.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Omer Farooq (10 February 2003). "Indian terror suspects 'to sue US'". BBC.
  10. ↑ "9/11 suspects Azmath, Ayub to face trial at home". Times of India. September 24, 2002.
  11. ↑ "2002 — National Reporting". Pulitzer Prizes.
  12. ↑ Dan Eggen and Bob Woodward (September 29, 2001). "U.S. Develops Picture of Overseas Plot". The Washington Post.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.