Ammar al-Baluchi

During a preliminary hearing, held on 17 September 2019, the prosecution released a transcript from a conversation al-Baluchi had with another captive, when they were in two nearby recreation yards. It had not been known, until the release of this transcript, that the recreation yards contained hidden listening devices. According to an article by Carol Rosenberg, published in The New York Times, Camp Seven had at least two recreation yards. Captives got a whole recreation yard to themselves, during their outdoor recreation time. But they could hear other captives in nearby yards, and could communicate with them, by yelling.

In 2018, the United Nations called for his immediate release from arbitrary detention.

Tracing the calls made to Baluchi's phone number, authorities discovered that he had received 16 calls from 28–30 June from a pre-paid Voicestream mobile purchased in Manhattan on 4 June. The phone was deactivated on 11 July, and authorities allege it belonged to Atta, while Baluchi insisted that he only ever spoke with Shehhi, who had hired him. Around this time, Baluchi complained to Mohammed that he couldn't do all this additional work himself, and his uncle told him that Mustafa Al-Hawsawi would co-ordinate with him to act as an assistant.

On 4 April 2012, the Department of Defense referred Guantanamo military commission charges against al Baluchi and four other men for participation in the conspiracy leading up to the September 11 attacks. On 5 May 2012, Military Judge James Pohl arraigned al Baluchi, and appointed attorneys to represent him.

A fictionalized account of al-Baluchi's interrogation at black sites is depicted in the 2012 film Zero Dark Thirty. The character "Ammar" is portrayed by Reda Kateb. Al-Baluchi has complained that the United States has provided more information to the filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal about al-Baluchi's treatment in CIA custody than it has to Baluchi's own attorneys.

In October 2011, in an operation called the "baseline review," the prison seized all legal materials belonging to "high-value detainees," starting with Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The prison also announced that it would change its previous policy and begin reviewing legal mail for its content. In response, the Chief Defense Counsel (United States) ordered the attorneys under his supervision to stop sending privileged communications to Guantanamo prisoners. Under the Chief Defense Counsel (United States) policy, Al-Baluchi could not receive mail from his attorneys until November 2013.

Baluchi also married Aafia Siddiqui. She was accused of being an al-Qaeda member and in February 2010 was convicted of assaulting with a deadly weapon and attempting to kill U.S. soldiers and FBI agents who were seeking to interrogate her while she was in custody, claimed to be married to Baluchi. The marriage was confirmed by Pakistani and US intelligence, a defense psychologist, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's family. (Siddiqui's family denies she was married to Baluchi.)

On 22 January 2009, United States President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13492, ordering a halt to the Guantanamo military commission as part of the overall closure of Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. On 21 April 2009, United States Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell cited "Ali Abd al-Azeez Ali" as an example of the kind of captive United States President Barack Obama might free in the United States when he closes the camp in January 2010, because he didn't know what else to do with him.

In February 2008, Baluchi was committed to a joint trial, charged with conspiracy, attacking civilians and civilian objects, causing serious bodily injury, murder, destruction of property, hijacking, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism.

Al Baluchi, Walid bin Attash, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed chose to serve as their own attorney. They requested laptops, and internet access, in order to prepare their defences. In October 2008 Ralph Kohlmann ruled that the men be provided with the computers, but not the internet access. Al Baluchi's request said he was a Microsoft Certified software engineer.

On 8 December 2008, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told the judge that he and the other four indictees wished to plead guilty; however, the plea would be delayed until after mental competency hearings for Hawsawi and bin al-Shibh. Mohammed said, "We want everyone to plead together."

The Summary of Evidence memo for Baluchi's Combatant Status Review Tribunal was drafted on 8 February 2007.

The Department of Defense announced on August 9, 2007 that all fourteen of the "high-value detainees" who had been transferred to Guantanamo from the CIA's black sites, had been officially classified as "enemy combatants". Although judges Peter Brownback and Keith J. Allred had ruled two months earlier that only "illegal enemy combatants" could face military commissions, the Department of Defense waived the qualifier and said that all fourteen men could now face charges before Guantanamo military commissions.

After his arrest al-Baluchi was kept in CIA custody at undisclosed locations until 6 September 2006 when he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay Prison in Cuba. In December 2005, Human Rights Watch listed him as a "ghost detainee" held in the CIA prison system. During al-Baluchi's secret detention, he was tortured by the CIA using many so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques". Officials reported: "al-Baluchi was tortured and forcibly dunked into a tub filled with ice water. CIA interrogators forcibly kept his head under water while he struggled to breathe and beat him repeatedly with a truncheon-like object hitting him and smashing his head against a wall."

On 6 September 2006, Baluchi was transferred from a black site location to Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He was given the Internment Serial Number 10018 and is currently detained at a top-secret site at the Guantanamo base that allegedly houses approximately 15 "high-value" prisoners. Its location and the conditions inside are withheld from public knowledge and there are suspected grave human rights concerns regarding its conditions. Al-Baluchi's attorney James G. Connell, III visited him there in August 2013 under an order issued by the military commission.

US District Court Justice Joyce Hens Green ruled that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals were unconstitutional. Nevertheless, the Department of Defense scheduled Tribunals for the 14 high-value captives who were transferred from covert CIA custody, on 6 September 2006, for early winter of 2007.

He later told investigators he helped his uncle arrange travel visas for people, but didn't know whether any of them were militants or not. In August 2002, the FBI questioned Abdul Samad Din Mohammed, the brother-in-law of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He reported that Baluchi was often in the company of his uncle, and would pick people up from the airport. His uncle KSM was arrested in Rawalpindi on March 1, 2003. Baluchi spent the next two months with Walid bin 'Attash. According to US reports, following his uncle's arrest Baluchi took charge of some of the new attacks being planned.

According to the FBI, after her arrest, Aafia Siddiqui told them that after she learned she was wanted by the US government she had gone into hiding around late March 2003 with the al-Baluchi clan. Divorced at the time, she stated she married Baluchi out of religious piety, since she "could not live in the same house with an unmarried male" (namely Baluchi) she married him. Their marriage was held in Hub Chowki outside of Karachi in the inner courtyard of Balouchi's house, with female al-Baluchi family members present. Siddiqui describes Balouchi as very kind to her, "a good man who is wrongly accused". (Siddiqui later repudiated all statements given to the FBI.)

Siddiqui was arrested April 29, 2003 in Karachi along with al-Attash.

On 7 November 2003, a detainee was interrogated and said that Mohamed Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh spoke briefly in August 2000 about a "Losh" who had asked Atta if he could travel to the United States to help with any potential plots, having already asked Mohammed three months earlier. Authorities allege this is a reference to Baluchi.

According to Balochi's file, he told interrogators that he became aware of a plan to attack Heathrow airport in January 2003 and had intended to seek help from a more senior al-Qaida operative, Walid bin Attash, to carry it out. An "analyst note" in the files notes that the plot called for "crashing numerous airplanes into Heathrow, with a secondary explosion immediately outside of the airport as a diversion". It collapsed after KSM was arrested in March 2003.

On 27 August 2001, Baluchi applied for a visa to travel to the United States for a week after his employer announced the closing of their Dubai branch, and the government had sent notices informing the employees their work permits had been rescinded and they had to leave the country. He was declined since he appeared to be an economic immigrant, and instead moved back home to Pakistan a few days before the attacks.

In January 2000, an order using Shehhi's credit card had a Boeing 747-400 flight simulator program, a Boeing 767 flight deck video, and some flight attendant literature and flight manuals shipped to Baluchi's work address. Baluchi then shipped them to his uncle to pass onto Shehhi.

He is fluent in English and worked at Mohammed's honey-processing company in Karachi for a while before being hired in 1998 as a computer technician for Modern Electronics Corporation in Dubai. According to some evidence given at the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, he was "very open-minded and western-oriented", while his ex-wife told investigators he was "a very strict Muslim" who opposed his wife's leaving the home.

On 10 October 1998, Baluchi used his passport to open a bank account with the Emirates Bank International, using the name "Ali" based on his kunya name Ibn Abdulaziz Ali and listing his employer's address with PO box 16958, Jebel Ali, Dubai.

According to a U.S. government biography, Balouchi "volunteered his services" to uncle KSM in 1997.

Ammar al-Baluchi was born in Kuwait City, Kuwait, and is the maternal nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (organizer of the 9/11 attacks) and cousin of Ramzi Yousef, the organizer of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The extended family of al-Baluchi is ethnically Baluchi and originally from Balochistan. The family patriarch and his brother were lay Deobandi preachers. They moved the family to Kuwait in the 1960s.

Baluchi grew up in Kuwait but spent most of teenage years in Iranian Baluchistan, but is a citizen of Pakistan. Trained as a computer technician, he dressed in Western clothes and "introduced himself as a businessman", but had been "groomed ... since boyhood" by his cousins and uncles "to join their clandestine war," according to journalist Debra Scroggins. According to a U.S. government biography, his "chief mentor" was his cousin and 1993 World Trade Center bombing orchestrator Ramzi Yousef, "who taught him in the early 1990s in Iran about the important of war against the West."