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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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June 16th,
2009 - Detainee Says He Lied to CIA in Harsh Interrogations News article from Los Angeles Times |
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Detainee Says He Lied to CIA
in Harsh Interrogations Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11
attacks, told the U.S. military that he made up stories, documents show. The
news could intensify the debate over interrogations. By Julian E. Barnes & Greg Miller Los Angeles Times June 16, 2009 Reporting from Washington -
Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told U.S. military
officials that he had lied to the CIA after being abused, according to
documents made public Monday. The claim is likely to intensify the debate
over whether harsh interrogation techniques generated accurate information. Mohammed made the assertion
during hearings at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was transferred in
2006after being held at secret CIA sites since his capture in 2003. "I make up
stories," Mohammed said, describing in broken English an interrogation
probably administered by the CIA concerning the whereabouts of Al Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden. "Where is he? I don't know. Then, he torture
me," Mohammed said of his interrogator. "Then I said, 'Yes, he is
in this area.' " Mohammed also appeared to
say that he had fingered people he did not know as being Al Qaeda members in
order to avoid abusive treatment. Although there is no way to corroborate his
statements, Mohammed is one of the militants whom the CIA repeatedly
subjected to the simulated-drowning technique known as waterboarding. The newly released
information could amplify calls for the Obama administration to make public
more details about the treatment of terrorism suspects or allow a broader
inquiry into the George W. Bush administration's interrogation policies.
Monday's disclosure represented a rare allegation by a detainee that he had
lied while being subjected to harsh practices. A lawyer for the American
Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the documents through a Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit, said Mohammed's statements raised questions about
the effectiveness of the CIA's interrogation program. "It underscores the
unreliability of statements obtained by torture," said Jameel Jaffer,
director of the ACLU's National Security Project. The CIA, however, took issue
with the description of its interrogation techniques as torture and the
assertion that they were not useful. "The CIA plainly has a
very different take on its past interrogation practices -- what they were and
what they weren't -- and on the need to protect properly classified national
security information," said Paul Gimigliano, an agency spokesman. The bulk of the documents
released Monday, consisting of transcripts of court hearings held at
Guantanamo Bay for accused Al Qaeda members, had been previously released.
But the Bush administration classified many parts of them, including
detainees' allegations that they were abused while in CIA custody. The
re-released transcripts remained heavily redacted, containing long passages
of blacked-out text. The ACLU expressed
disappointment that President Obama, who has pledged greater openness, had
decided to withhold so much of the information. "The public has a right
to know what took place in the CIA's secret prisons," Jaffer said,
adding that the ACLU would continue to press in court for completely
unclassified versions of transcripts from the Guantanamo Bay tribunals. In addition to Mohammed's
allegation that he had offered false information after being tortured, the
documents contained some new details about the detention of terrorism
suspects. A newly declassified portion
of Mohammed's transcript showed that the CIA apparently told him that he had
no constitutional rights. "This is what I
understand he told me: You are not American and you are not on American
soil," Mohammed said in the military hearing. "So you cannot ask
about the Constitution." Ben Wizner, the lead ACLU
lawyer in the lawsuit seeking an unclassified version of the transcripts,
said the fact that the CIA had previously sought to classify that statement
was extraordinary. "Why would the Bush
administration suppress [Mohammed's] statement that he was told by the CIA
that he was not protected by the Constitution?" Wizner said. "This
was suppressed to avoid embarrassment." The newly declassified
material provided little new information on the treatment of another
detainee, accused Al Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaydah. He was captured in a
violent raid on a Pakistani compound in March 2002. On one page, the CIA
declassified two paragraphs in which Abu Zubaydah complained about a lack of
treatment for injuries he sustained in the shootout, including the loss of a
testicle. "They did not care
about my injuries that they inflicted to my eye, to my stomach, to my
bladder, and my left thigh and my reproductive organs," Abu Zubaydah
said. He went on to complain that
he was "losing my masculinity. Even my beard is falling out, not from
injuries but from the lack of treatment." Wizner said the techniques
the CIA used to interrogate Al Qaeda suspects were made public when the Obama
administration this year released Justice Department legal memos authorizing
them, so there was no reason to keep the detainees' testimony secret. "There is only one
explanation for the continued suppression. It is not to protect national
security, it is to protect the CIA from accountability," Wizner said. Despite the CIA's efforts to
suppress prisoners' statements about their treatment, other sources have
provided highly detailed accounts -- including a 2007 Red Cross report that
surfaced publicly this year. In that document, Abu
Zubaydah described his reaction to being waterboarded, saying he thought he
was going to die. "I lost control of my
urine," Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross, according to the organization's
report. "Since then I still lose control of my urine when under
stress." In the documents released
Monday, Rahim Nashiri, who is accused of involvement in the bombing of the
U.S. destroyer Cole in 2000, described the aftereffects of his questioning. "Before I was arrested
I used to be able to run about 10 kilometers," he said at the hearing in
March 2007. "Now I cannot walk for more than 10 minutes. My nerves are
swollen in my body." And in another newly
released portion of the transcript, he described how government officials
would "drown me in water," a reference to the CIA's waterboarding
technique. More than 7 1/2 pages of the
hearing transcript of Majid Khan, another accused Al Qaeda member, remained
classified and appeared as one long block of blacked-out text. Among the few
newly released statements of Khan's include his assertion that the evidence
against him was a result of torture. "In the end," he
said, "any classified information you have is through [redacted]
agencies who physically and mentally tortured me." External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cia-detainee16-2009jun16,0,316330.story CIA Mistaken on ‘High-Value’
Detainee, Document Shows By Peter Finn & Julie Tate Washington Post June 16, 2009 An al-Qaeda associate
captured by the CIA and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques said his
jailers later told him they had mistakenly thought he was the No. 3 man in
the organization's hierarchy and a partner of Osama bin Laden, according to
newly released excerpts from a 2007 hearing. "They told me, 'Sorry,
we discover that you are not Number 3, not a partner, not even a fighter,'"
said Abu Zubaida, speaking in broken English, according to the new transcript
of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal held at the U.S. military prison in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President George W. Bush
described Abu Zubaida in 2002 as "al-Qaeda's chief of operations."
Intelligence, military and law enforcement sources told The Washington Post
this year that officials later concluded he was a Pakistan-based
"fixer" for radical Islamist ideologues, but not a formal member of
al-Qaeda, much less one of its leaders. Abu Zubaida, a nom de guerre
for Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, told the 2007 panel of military officers
at the detention facility in Cuba that "doctors told me that I nearly
died four times" and that he endured "months of suffering and
torture" on the false premise that he was an al-Qaeda leader. Abu Zubaida, 38, was
subjected 83 times to waterboarding, a technique that leads victims to
believe they are drowning and that has been widely condemned as torture. The
Palestinian was held at a secret CIA facility after his capture in Pakistan
in March 2002. The Abu Zubaida transcript,
and those of five other "high-value detainees," including Khalid
Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks, were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request
and lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. Versions of the
transcripts were released by the Pentagon in 2007. Abu Zubaida, Mohammed and 12
other high-value detainees were transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006
and continue to be held there at Camp 7, a secret facility at the naval base,
part of a total population of 229 detainees. After a meeting yesterday
with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, President Obama announced that
Italy has agreed to resettle three detainees. The United States and the
27-nation European Union also issued a joint statement yesterday noting that
"certain Member States of the European Union have expressed their
readiness to assist with the reception of certain former Guantanamo
detainees, on a case-by-case basis." The statement said the
United States "will consider contributing to the costs" of
resettling detainees in Europe. Although little new
information was released in the hearing transcript for Majid Khan, an alleged
associate of Mohammed and a former resident of Baltimore, the extent of the
redactions is more apparent in the latest document. When referring to his
treatment at CIA "black site" prisons, the Pakistani's transcript
is blacked out for eight consecutive pages. In the version released earlier,
this entire section was marked by a single word: "REDACTED." Similar redactions appear in
other transcripts released yesterday. The ACLU said the continued level of
redaction was unacceptable and vowed to return to court to press for
unexpurgated transcripts. "The only conceivable
basis for suppressing this testimony is not to protect the American people
but to protect the CIA from legal accountability," said Ben Wizner, a
staff attorney for the ACLU. "There is no reason to continue to censor detainee
abuse allegations." George Little, a CIA
spokesman, said, "The CIA plainly has a very different take on its past
interrogation practices - what they were and what they weren't - and on the
need to protect properly classified national security information." The new transcripts provide
some limited new insight into the interaction between the CIA and its
prisoners. Mohammed, who was
waterboarded 183 times, appears to have invoked the U.S. Constitution to
protest his treatment. He described the response he
received: "You are not American, and you are not on American soil. So
you cannot ask about the Constitution." Mohammed also said he lied
in response to questions about bin Laden's location. "Where is he? I don't
know," Mohammed said. "Then he torture me. Then I said yes, he is
in this area." External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/15/AR2009061503045.html |