Charges Dropped Against Gitmo Detainee Subjected to Brutal Interrogation

Charges Dropped Against Gitmo Detainee Subjected to Brutal Interrogation

By Jason Leopold
The Public Record
May 14, 2008

Did the Pentagon drop war crimes and murder charges against a Guantanamo detainee believed to be the “20th hijacker” in the 9/11 attacks because his interrogators used brutal methods to extract information from him?

That’s what the head of a civil rights organization who is defending the prisoner believes. A detainee is escorted for interrogation in 2002.

“It’s the only explanation,” Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York, said in an interview with The Public Record Tuesday one day after he was told that the Pentagon will not pursue the death penalty and has decided to drop 9/11 related charges against Mohammad Al Qahtani.

“I will say that all of the statements Mohammad Al Qahtani made or is alleged to have made was the result of torture or made under the threat of torture and that is in my view why the government decided to dismiss his case at this point,” Warren told The Public Record.

Warren said he wants the Pentagon to release Al Qahtani and have him sent to Saudi Arabia, “where they have a system in place to maintain custody of any former Guantanamo detainee who presents a danger, as well as a strong rehabilitation program supervising those that are released.”

“It’s unlikely he would face torture or abuse [in Saudi Arabi] on the magnitude Mr. Al Qahtani faced at Gitmo,” Warren said.

The Pentagon rejected calls by CCR to have Al Qahtani sent to Saudi Arabia. A Pentagon spokesman said late Tuesday that Al Qahtani will remain imprisoned at Guantanamo as an enemy combatant and unindicted co-conspirator.

Susan J. Crawford, who was appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates as the convening authority for military commissions at Guantanamo, refused to approve military prosecutors’ charges filed against Al Qahtani. Crawford is a former Judge of United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and general counsel for the Department of the Army

The reasons Crawford made that decision has not been disclosed publicly. Warren said he has not been provided with an explanation for the decision by Crawford or the Pentagon.

CCR has been representing Mohammed al Qahtani since 2005 and has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last six years – sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and sending the first attorney to meet with a former CIA “ghost detainee.”

In February, the Pentagon announced its intention to pursue the death penalty against Al Qahtani and five other men for their involvement in the 9/11 attacks. On Friday, the Pentagon dismissed its case against Al Qahtani but said it would pursue charges against the other men. Because the Al Qahtani’s case was dismissed without prejudice the Pentagon could re-file charges at a later date.

Al Qahtani, who was captured in December 2001, was denied entry into the United States by immigration official. Pentagon officials said the fact that he was unable to enter the U.S. is the reason he did not take part in 9/11.

He is believed to be one of the first detainees who was subjected to harsh interrogation methods immediately after the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a legal opinion in August 2002 authorizing interrogators to sidestep the Geneva Conventions use methods such as waterboarding to extract information from detainees at Guantanamo.

The Geneva Convention bars abusive or demeaning treatment of captives. John Yoo, the author of two DOJ legal opinions authorizing harsh interrogations, concluded that the Geneva Convention did not apply to members of al-Qaeda.

An 84-page “torture log” leaked in 2006 showed that beginning in November 2002 and continuing well into January 2003 Al Qahtani, referred to as detainee 063, was subjected to sleep deprivation combined with 20-hour interrogations for months at a time; religious and sexual humiliation; threats of rendition to countries that; threats made against his family, including female members of his family; humiliating him by forcing him to bark like a dog, dance with a mask on his face, and pick up piles of trash with his hands cuffed while he was called “a pig”; administration of frequent IVs by medical personnel during interrogation, which Al Qahtani described as feeling like “repetitive stabs” each day.

The log contains numerous entries describing Al Qahtani’s reaction to the interrogations.

“Detainee began to cry. Visibly shaken. Very emotional. Detainee cried. Disturbed. Detainee began to cry. Detainee bit the IV tube completely in two. Started moaning. Uncomfortable. Moaning. Began crying hard spontaneously. Crying and praying. Very agitated. Yelled. Agitated and violent. Detainee spat. Detainee proclaimed his innocence. Whining. Dizzy. Forgetting things. Angry. Upset. Yelled for Allah. Urinated on himself. Began to cry. Asked God for forgiveness. Cried. Cried. Became violent. Began to cry. Broke down and cried. Began to pray and openly cried. Cried out to Allah several times. Trembled uncontrollably.”

“On one occasion described in the interrogation log, Mr. Al Qahtani was rushed to a military base hospital when his heart rate fell dangerously low during a period of extreme sleep deprivation, physical stress and psychological trauma. The military flew in a radiologist from the U.S. Naval Station in Puerto Rico to evaluate the computed tomography (“CT” or “CAT”) scan. After being permitted to sleep a full night, medical personnel cleared Mr. Al Qahtani for further interrogation the next day. During his transportation from the hospital, Mr. Al Qahtani was interrogated in the ambulance,” according to a report prepared by CCR attorneys.

Warren said that in the event of a trial, the government would be forced to disclose how it obtained information from Al Qahtani about alleged terrorist plans and the inner workings of al-Qaeda.

“We were pursuing the case that the government got evidence through torture,” Warren said. “The government would have to talk about how the information was obtained. That would never be able to survive in court because the torture log is clear that Mr. Al Qahtani provided information because he was being tortured.”

Rumsfeld Approved Interrogation

As previously reported by The Public Record specific interrogation methods used against Al Qahtani were approved by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in a December 2002 action memorandum.

Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, an attorney with CCR and the lead attorney defending Al Qahtani, said in a sworn declaration that his client, imprisoned at Guantanamo, was subjected to months of torture based on verbal and written authorizations from Rumsfeld.

“At Guantánamo, Mr. Al Qahtani was subjected to a regime of aggressive interrogation techniques, known as the ‘First Special Interrogation Plan,’ that were authorized by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,” Gutierrez said.

“Those techniques were implemented under the supervision and guidance of Secretary Rumsfeld and the commander of Guantánamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller. These methods included, but were not limited to, 48 days of severe sleep deprivation and 20-hour interrogations, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, physical force, prolonged stress positions and prolonged sensory over-stimulation, and threats with military dogs.”

Gutierrez’s claims about the type of interrogation Al Qahtani endured have since been borne out with the release of hundreds of pages of internal Pentagon documents describing interrogation methods at Guantanamo and at least two independent reports about prisoner abuse.

Rumsfeld’s action memo was criticized by Alberto Mora, the former general counsel of the Navy.

“The interrogation techniques approved by the Secretary [of Defense] should not have been authorized because some (but not all) of them, whether applied singly or in combination, could produce effects reaching the level of torture, a degree of mistreatment not otherwise proscribed by the memo because it did not articulate any bright-line standard for prohibited detainee treatment, a necessary element in any such document,” Mora wrote in a 14-page letter to the Navy’s inspector general.

Additionally, a Dec. 20, 2005, Army Inspector General Report relating to the capture and interrogation of Mohammad al-Qahtani included a sworn statement by Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt. It said Secretary Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in the interrogation of al-Qahtani and spoke “weekly” with Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander at Guantanamo, about the status of the interrogations between late 2002 and early 2003.

According to the Schlesinger report, orders signed by Bush and Rumsfeld in 2002 and 2003 authorizing brutal interrogations “became policy” at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

In February, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) confirmed that it launched a formal investigation to determine, among other issues, whether agency attorneys, provided the White House with poor legal advice when it said interrogators could use harsh interrogation methods against detainees.

 

This is why there are charges of War Crimes against Rumsfeld, brought in France and Germany so far. Torture is unacceptable in a civilized society. And it almost never yields usable intelligence according to many experts. The testimony gained from torture is almost universally inadmissible in court.

Of course, Clinton began the "Extraordinary Rendition" program, where people thought to be dangerous are kidnapped, then sent to pseudo-allies like Syria, where they are raped, beaten and all around tortured for years, then dumped on a street in Morocco or elsewhere, naked and mentally destroyed.

Of course, this is rarely if ever discussed. Even the neocons don't like to own up to Clinton's program. Ironically, it was designed by a man Ron Paul leans on heavily for anti-terrorism advice. And people say Ron is soft on defense. lol