Judge in September 11 case visits former CIA black site

For the first time, a military judge at Guantanamo Bay entered the security zone of the wartime prison on Friday and inspected the former CIA “black site” facility at the center of controversy over the taint of torture on Sept. 11, 2001. Case.

It was a remarkable moment in the two-decade history of the Guantanamo trials. No war court judge before had traveled five miles to view the detention operations, where the Army maintains the only known, still-intact remnant of the network of overseas prisons that the CIA operated from 2002 to 2009. Was.

But Judge Colonel Mathew N. McCall is headed for a ruling on whether accused mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and three co-defendants, in their fourth year in custody, voluntarily confessed to plotting the attacks during questioning. By FBI agents at Guantánamo prison.

And the prison site he visited, called Camp Echo, has played a central but secret role in the case. From 2003 to 2004, the CIA held five highly prized prisoners near prison facilities, but away from the reach of the International Red Cross. It was part of its covert overseas network that hid approximately 120 “high-value detainees” in far-flung locations such as Afghanistan, Thailand and Poland.

In April 2004, the agency closed the black site at Guantanamo on the advice of the Justice Department and transferred those five prisoners to other secret sites, in order to avoid a US Supreme Court decision later that year in which the US -Detainees were allowed into the controlled Guantanamo Bay. Access to lawyers.

In September 2006, President George W. After Bush ordered Mr. Mohammed and 13 other CIA prisoners taken to Guantanamo to face trial, federal agents used the same part of Camp Echo to obtain ostensibly legitimate confessions, which prosecutors called the “Clean Team.” Used to say.

The issue now is whether the statements made in 2007 are admissible in the final trial of Mr. Mohammed and three men accused of being his accomplices in helping the 19 hijackers who took part in the September 11 attacks.

Prosecutors consider those inquiries the most important evidence in the capital case that has been stuck in a preliminary hearing since 2012. They argue that the statements were voluntary, and therefore would be admissible.

Defense lawyers argue that, by 2007, Mr. Mohammed and others had been so prepared through years of torture, solitary confinement and frequent CIA debriefings that they were helpless to answer questions when asked.

Military judges have generally stayed away from the detainee operation, which currently holds 30 prisoners. Judges have summoned commanders to court to answer questions and lawyers have provided photographs of prison conditions as court evidence.

Lawyers for one of the defendants, Ammar al Baluchi, proposed a field trip to the judge, who spent less than 20 minutes inspecting the complex of wooden huts with steel cells divided in two.

One half has a sleeping mat, a shower, a sink and a metal pallet for the toilet, which is made of metal, Mr Baluchi’s lawyer Alka Pradhan told the judge in court on Friday to guide him ahead of his visit. The other half was set up as an interrogation room and has linoleum on the floor and a bolthole, where a detainee’s ankles are shackled during legal meetings that are still held.

“On information and trust,” she said, there was also “a bonding point on the roof” for some time. But he did not say when.

In a section of Camp Echo visited by journalists, wooden huts have windows. But in the huts in the section where CIA prisoners were held and interrogated, there is no natural light – unless the outer door is left open.

Ms Pradhan said the visit was to support the defense team’s argument that Mr Baluchi considered the 2007 interrogation to be another stop in his journey of torture through black sites. Interrogators testified that they shared meals from McDonald’s and conversed with him.

But Ms Pradhan said that simply being there, at a site similar to earlier black sites where she was beaten, stripped naked and deprived of sleep, “instilled in her an intense fear” that led to her Pass left no choice but to tell his interrogators what they wanted to hear.

Colonel McCall left his black cloak at the courthouse and drove himself and a colleague to the checkpoint that controlled access to the prison complex, a 15-minute walk from an Irish pub, McDonald’s and a bowling alley. Provides services for approximately 5,000 residents – most of whom have never been allowed inside the prison area.

In 2019, the US government made public the fact that part of Camp Echo was a black site at Guantanamo, but defense lawyers had been aware of that national security secret for years. Three defendants in capital cases told their lawyers they had been there before.

One of them, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, is accused of plotting an al Qaeda suicide bombing on the USS Cole destroyer near Yemen on October 12, 2000, the longest-running death toll at Guantánamo Bay. It is a matter of punishment.

Last year, the military judge in that case, Colonel Lanny J. Acosta Jr. rejected statements made by Mr. Nashiri to federal interrogation of Echo in 2007, which were taken from his years of torture by the CIA.

“The FBI interview in 2007 actually took place on the same premises – and probably even in the same cell,” he wrote.