[9] Baluchi's ex-wife Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani cognitive neuroscientist, was arrested by Afghan police in Ghazni Province in 2008 and subsequently transferred to American custody at FMC Carswell, where she remains incarcerated on terrorism charges.

After being arrested in Karachi, Baluch was transferred to Afghanistan and detained at the Salt Pit, a now-defunct CIA black site near Bagram Airfield.

It has been reported that he was tortured extensively, being used as a "training prop" to teach enhanced interrogation techniques to new agents; trainees took turns shoving his head into a wall in sessions that lasted for hours, inflicting considerable brain damage.

[11][2] In 2018, the United Nations released a public announcement stating that Baluchi's ongoing captivity "breaches human rights law" and called on American authorities to immediately end his arbitrary detention.

[16] Trained as a computer technician, he dressed in Western clothes and "introduced himself as a businessman",[14] but had been "groomed ... since boyhood" by his cousins and uncles "to join their clandestine war," according to journalist Deborah Scroggins.

[14] 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 importance of war against the West.

"[15] 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.

[16] According to some evidence given at the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, he was "very open-minded and western-oriented",[16] while his ex-wife told investigators he was "a very strict Muslim" who opposed his wife's leaving the home.

[8][17] The 9/11 Commission reported that he "helped them with plane tickets, traveler's checks, and hotel reservations", and "taught them about everyday aspects of life in the West, such as purchasing clothes and ordering food".

[8][18] On 18 April, Baluchi sent a wire transfer of $5,000 to Adel Rafeea, the administrator of the Islamic Center of San Diego, from the Wall Street Exchange Centre in Dubai, using his PO Box, passport and listing his phone number as 0506745651.

[16] 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.

[8] The 9/11 Commission Report stated that he "relied on the unremarkable nature of his transactions, which were essentially invisible amid the billions of dollars flowing daily across the globe.

"[8] 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.

According to a short biography written by the United States government's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), after the Taliban was initially driven from power after the 9/11 attack, al-Balouchi assisted KSM in organizing the movement of al-Qaeda operatives and their families to safehouses in Pakistan.

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.

[16] Baluchi was also accused of discussing the possibility of exporting explosives to the United States through textile companies, but claims to have no knowledge of what conversation is being referenced.

In it, trainees would line up and take turns "shoving" a naked and tied-up Baluchi head-first into a plywood wall behind him, with sessions typically lasting for a few hours each.

In addition, the inspector general said that interrogators in the black site also carried out torture that went beyond the CIA's guidelines, including dousing him with ice water and forcing him to kneel backwards with a stick behind his knees in a stress position.

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.

Although he was not able to call Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Saifullah Paracha or Ramzi bin al-Shibh to testify about his lack of connection to al-Qaeda, he was permitted to have his legal representative field statements they had made.

[16] Baluchi requested statements be garnered from Modern Electronics Corporation personnel, including Samir Sharin, Mohammed Mayer, Asraf Mayer, Ammar al-Tesqui and Sayed Tesqui that would testify he had no connections to militant forces, and that his employee records would show that he left several days before the attacks because his work permit had expired when MEC closed its Dubai branch.

[16] The tribunal judge ruled that although Baluchi's leaving Dubai a few days prior to the attacks was among the reasons for his capture, it was not relevant to seek records from his employer.

[16] In his defence, Baluchi argued that he often acted as a "businessman" to supplement his income, and thus his signature, telephone number and similar details were easily obtained in Dubai.

[16] 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".

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.

[45][46] 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.

[47] In response, the Chief Defense Counsel (United States) ordered the attorneys under his supervision to stop sending privileged communications to Guantanamo prisoners.

[49] 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.

The purpose of the hearing was to help a new judge, W. Shane Cohen, make a decision as to whether confessions given to the "clean team" were still compromised by al Baluchi's torture.