Breaking new ground, a military judge at Guantánamo Bay recently ventured into the security zone housing the wartime prison to examine a former C.I.A. “black site” facility linked to allegations of torture in the Sept. 11, 2001, case.
This unprecedented move marks a significant moment in the twenty-year saga of the Guantánamo trials. Never before had a war court judge made the journey to observe the detention operations, where the military preserves the sole remaining intact fragment of the C.I.A.’s network of overseas prisons from 2002 to 2009.
Col. Matthew N. McCall, the judge, is now on the brink of a decision regarding whether the accused mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and three co-defendants provided voluntary confessions during their fourth year of detention, while being interrogated by F.B.I. agents at Guantánamo prison.
The prison facility he visited, known as Camp Echo, has played a pivotal yet clandestine role in the case. Between 2003 and 2004, the C.I.A. held five high-profile prisoners there, close to the prison facilities but beyond the reach of the International Red Cross. This site was part of a covert overseas network that concealed approximately 120 “high-value detainees” in locations like Afghanistan, Thailand, and Poland.
In April 2004, the agency shut down the black site at Guantánamo and relocated those five prisoners to other undisclosed sites, following advice from the Justice Department to evade a forthcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling that year granting detainees at U.S.-controlled Guantánamo Bay access to legal representation.
After President George W. Bush ordered Mr. Mohammed and 13 other C.I.A. prisoners to be transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006 for trial, federal agents utilized the same section of Camp Echo to obtain purportedly lawful confessions from what the prosecutors termed “clean teams.”
The current debate revolves around the admissibility of statements made by the men in 2007 at the eventual trial of Mr. Mohammed and the three individuals accused of aiding the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Prosecutors view these interrogations as crucial evidence in the capital case, which has been entangled in preliminary hearings since 2012. They contend that the statements were voluntary and therefore admissible.
On the other hand, defense attorneys argue that by 2007, Mr. Mohammed and the others had been conditioned through years of torture, solitary confinement, and constant C.I.A. debriefings to feel compelled to respond to questions on demand.
Military judges have typically steered clear of the detainee operation, currently housing 30 prisoners. They have summoned commanders to court for questioning, and lawyers have submitted photographs of prison conditions as evidence in court.
Attorneys representing one of the defendants, Ammar al Baluchi, suggested the judge undertake the field trip, during which he spent less than 20 minutes examining the compound of wooden huts containing divided steel cells.
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2024-04-26 18:38:32
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