Mustafa al-Hawsawi

On December 7, 2015, Amnesty International, USA launched a campaign to raise awareness regarding al-Hawsawi's military commission trial, which they alleged violates international fair trial standards by frustrating the truth seeking process by impeding transparency and denying accountability for torture.

On January 23, 2015, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention held that al-Hawsawi's ongoing detention in Guantánamo Bay was arbitrary, and in contravention of articles 9 and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

On July 7, 2015, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution on precautionary measures regarding al-Hawsawi requesting the United States of America, inter alia, to adopt the necessary measures to protect the life and personal integrity of al-Hawsawi, and to adopt the necessary measures to ensure access to medical care and treatment.

On December 9, 2014, a redacted executive summary of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture was publicly released. This executive summary revealed the following information regarding al-Hawsawi's torture:

On April 25, 2011, whistleblower organization WikiLeaks published formerly secret assessments drafted by Joint Task Force Guantanamo analysts. His seven-page Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment was drafted on December 8, 2006. It was signed by deputy camp commandant Brigadier General Edward L. Secord. He recommended continued detention.

In May 2009, Al Arabiya reported that Montasser al-Zayyat, a prominent Saudi Arabian attorney, had been invited to defend al-Hawsawi. Al Zayat described suspecting, at first, that he was the target of a hoax.

On August 31, 2009, Corrections One, a trade journal for the prison industry, proclaimed that "Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi" was one of ten captives they speculated might be moved to a maximum security prison in Standish, Michigan.

On April 23, 2008, attorneys working on behalf of Salim Ahmed Hamdan requested permission to meet with Abdulmalik Mohammed and Mustafa Al-Hawsawi. Hamdan's attorneys had previously requested permission to get the "high-value detainees" to answer written questions. They believed the men would confirm that if Hamdan played a role in al Qaeda, it had been a peripheral one. Abdulmalik Mohammed and Mustafa Al-Hawsawi declined to answer the questions, because they said they had no way to know that the questions purporting to be from Hamdan's attorneys were not a ruse. Andrea J. Prasow requested permission for Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer to meet in person with the two men to try to assure them that the questions were not a ruse, and would not be shared with their interrogators.

In June 2008, al-Hawsawi and four other "high-value detainees" (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ammar al-Baluchi and Walid Bin Attash) were charged with crimes brought before the Guantanamo military commission. The charges included 2,973 individual counts of murder, one for each person killed in the September 11 attacks, as well as conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, terrorism, and providing material support for terrorism. The judge ordered al-Hawsawi and bin al-Shibh to undergo mental competency hearings. On December 8, 2008, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told the judge that he and the other four indictees wished to confess and plead guilty; however, the plea would be delayed until after the competency hearings for al-Hawsawi and bin al-Shibh, so that all five men could make their plea together. The charges against all five were dismissed on January 21, 2010, before a plea was entered.

Scholars at the Brookings Institution, led by Benjamin Wittes, listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention was justified by certain common allegations, as follows:

Al-Hawsawi was transferred from CIA custody to military custody at Guantanamo on September 6, 2006. The Bush administration was then confident of passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which restricted detainee use of habeas corpus, and prohibited them from using the federal court system. (This provision was ruled unconstitutional in Boumediene v. Bush (2008) and numerous habeas corpus petitions were refiled in federal courts.)

Originally the Bush Presidency asserted that captives apprehended in the "war on terror" were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, 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 ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being informed of the allegations justifying their detention, and were entitled to try to refute them.

Mustafa Al-Hawsawi was captured in Pakistan by Pakistani agents in March 2003 and was transferred to the custody of the United States. He was held in secret CIA black sites until September 2006, when he was transferred to Guantánamo Bay and U.S. officials finally acknowledged his imprisonment. It detained him at the Salt Pit, a secret black site in Afghanistan. It was reported in August 2010 that, after months of interrogation, the CIA transferred al-Hawsawi and three other high-value detainees to Guantanamo Bay detention camp on September 24, 2003, for indefinite detention. Fearing that Rasul v. Bush, a pending Supreme Court case about detainees' habeas corpus rights, might result in having to provide the men with access to counsel, the CIA took back custody on March 27, 2004, and transported the four men to one of their black sites.

Al-Hawsawi's arrest on March 1, 2003, in Pakistan was unrelated to any reporting from CIA detainees. He was reportedly taken to the U.S. Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. The CIA maintained a detention and interrogation site there. This was not confirmed by U.S. officials.

Al-Hawsawi was charged with being in the United Arab Emirates starting in April 2001, and with assisting at least one would be hijacker with travel arrangements to the United States. On September 11, 2001, al-Hawsawi travelled from the United Arab Emirates to Pakistan. Al-Hawsawi said that he first learned of the 9/11 operation following the attacks and was surprised by the size of the 9/11 operation.

Mustafa Al-Hawsawi (Arabic: مصطفى الهوساوي ‎, Muṣṭafā al-Ḥawsāwī; born August 5, 1968) is a Saudi Arabian citizen of African descent. He is alleged to have acted as one of many financial facilitators of the September 11 attacks in the United States. However, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture which was publicly released on December 9, 2014, disclosed an internal CIA cable between the chief of interrogations and the CIA Headquarters wherein he expressed reservations regarding al-Hawsawi's alleged role and involvement in the plot. The report reveals "following al-Hawsawi's first interrogation session, Chief of Interrogations asked CIA Headquarters for information on what al-Hawsawi actually "knows," saying: "he does not appear to the [sic] be a person that is a financial mastermind."