Mustafa al-Hawsawi

Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi (مصطفى احمد ادم هوساوي; born August 5, 1968 ) is a Saudi Arabian citizen.

He is alleged to have acted as a key financial facilitator for the September 11 attacks in the United States.

Al-Hawsawi was charged with being in the United Arab Emirates starting in April 2001, and would help send the last four operatives (other than Mihdhar) to the U.S and assisted them by purchasing clothing, food, lodging, rental cars, traveler’s checks, and making travel arrangements.

Hawsawi's role as a financial facilitator appeared to have begun when hijacker Banihammad helped Hawsawi complete an account application in the UAE and granted him power of attorney over his account so Hawsawi could forward the bank card to him in the US, $4,900 was subsequently deposited into this account by Hawsawi.

Between June, 2001 and September, 2001, Al-Hawsawi collected money, packages and provided various sums money to the hijackers.

In early September 2001, hijackers started sending Hawsawi a series of wire transfers totaling about $28,000 — apparently unspent advances on expenses — from addresses in Broward County, Florida and Boston, Al-Hawsawi would later comment that as the money flowed in, he came to understand that “an operation” would soon happen.

On September 11, 2001, Al-Hawsawi traveled 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 was captured in Pakistan by Pakistani agents in March 2003 and was transferred to the custody of the United States.

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.

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 held in secret CIA custody, for several years.

When the United States Senate Intelligence Committee published a 600-page unclassified summary of its 6,000-page classified report on the CIA's use of torture, it became known that al-Hawsawi was held in several CIA black sites during his years in secret detention, where he was subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques which amounted to torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

In particular, the report revealed that:

Moreover, the findings of the Senate Report raised doubts about Al-Hawsawi's detention, identifying him as one of a number of individuals who were detained under the CIA's program "despite doubts and questions surrounding [his] knowledge of terrorist threats and the location of senior al-Qa'ida leadership".

In fact, after his first interrogation, the Chief of Interrogations wrote to CIA Headquarters saying that al-Hawsawi "does not appear to the [sic] be a person that is a financial mastermind."

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.

It has long been known that, during al-Hawsawi's CIA captivity, his captors injured him, causing him to suffer from anal fissures, chronic hemorrhoids and, most seriously, symptomatic rectal prolapse.

When the United States Senate Intelligence Committee published a 600-page unclassified summary of its 6,000-page report on the CIA's use of torture, the world learned that the CIA routinely punished its captives by sodomizing them, claiming the sodomy was the long abandoned medical technique of rectal feeding.

The United States Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of the CIA's Torture Program revealed that detainees were routinely subjected to unnecessary rectal exams without evidence of medical necessity for purposes of behavioral control.

CIA leadership, including General Counsel Scott Muller and DDO James Pavitt, were alerted to allegations that rectal exams were conducted with "excessive force" on two detainees at the Salt Pit detention site.

CIA records indicate that one of the detainees, Mustafa Al-Hawsawi, was later

diagnosed with chronic hemorrhoids, an anal fissure, and symptomatic rectal prolapse.

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.

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, however, ruled unconstitutional in Boumediene v. Bush (2008), and numerous habeas corpus petitions were refiled in the federal courts).

Al-Hawsawi remains incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.

Although it is alleged that al-Hawsawi was a member of al-Qaeda, he stated in a Combatant Status Review Hearing that he is not a member of al-Qaeda, and never swore an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

Al-Hawsawi had previously worked in Al-Qaeda's media committee and was selected by Khalid Shaikh Mohammad to assist as a travel and financial facilitator for the hijackers.

This was done after Mohammed's nephew, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, requested assistance with helping the hijackers.

Mohammed stated Al-Hawsawi was one of the main contacts for the hijackers while they were in the U.S and that Mohammed's knowledge about the pilots mainly came from Al-Hawsawi or Ramzi Binalshibh.

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.