The military judge in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case on Friday threw out confessions the Saudi defendant had made to federal agents at Guantánamo Bay after years of secret imprisonment by the C.I.A., declaring the statements the product of torture.
The decision deprives prosecutors of a key piece of evidence against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 58, in the longest-running death-penalty case at Guantánamo Bay. He is accused of orchestrating Al Qaeda’s suicide bombing of the warship on Oct. 12, 2000, in Yemen’s Aden Harbor that killed 17 U.S. sailors.
“Exclusion of such evidence is not without societal costs,” the judge, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., wrote in a 50-page decision. “However, permitting the admission of evidence obtained by or derived from torture by the same government that seeks to prosecute and execute the accused may have even greater societal costs.”
The question of whether the confessions were admissible had been seen as a crucial test of a more than decade-long joint effort by the Justice and Defense Departments to prosecute accused architects of Qaeda attacks. The special Guantánamo court is designed to grapple with the impact of earlier, violent C.I.A. interrogations on war crimes trial, including death-penalty cases.
Similar efforts to suppress confessions as tainted by torture are being made in the case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other prisoners who are accused of conspiring in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Nashiri, like Mr. Mohammed, was waterboarded and subjected to other forms of torture in 2002 by C.I.A. interrogators, including contract psychologists, through a program of “enhanced interrogation.”
Testimony showed that the psychologists took part in a yearslong program that, even after the violent interrogation techniques ended, used isolation, sleep deprivation, punishment for defiance and implied threats of more violence to keep the prisoners cooperative and speaking to interrogators.
Prosecutors considered Mr. Nashiri’s confessions to federal and Navy criminal investigative agents at Guantánamo in early 2007, four months after his transfer from a C.I.A. prison, to be among the best evidence against him.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is charged in the bombing of the Cole, the longest-running death-penalty case at Guantánamo Bay.Credit…ABC, via Associated Press
But prosecutors also sought, and received permission from the judge, to use a transcript from other questioning at Mr. Nashiri’s eventual trial.
In March 2007, he went before a military panel examining his status as an enemy combatant and was allowed to address allegations involving his role in Al Qaeda plots. He told military officers that he had confessed after being tortured by the C.I.A., but then recanted.
At the administrative hearing, Mr. Nashiri denied being a member of Al Qaeda or involvement in the plots but admitted to knowing Osama bin Laden and receiving funds from him for an unrealized shipping business project in…
2023-08-19 12:53:39
Original from www.nytimes.com
rnrn