Guantánamo Bay
The 38th pre-trial hearing of five men accused of
involvement in attacks on New York in September 2001 dominated the month of September
at Guantánamo as the first ever three-week hearing started on 9 September,
ending on Friday 27th, to discuss a defence motion to suppress testimonies
from FBI witnesses as well as what can and cannot be asked of them. Prior to
the start of this hearing, the prosecution issued a document revealing facts
that had previously been classified. These revealed that the FBI had access to
some of the defendants when they were held at secret CIA prisons prior to being
brought to Guantánamo in 2006. According to one of the defence lawyers, James
Connell, who filed the motion, the information shows that “the FBI sent well
over 1,000 questions to the CIA for the agency to ask detainees, including [Khalid
Sheikh] Mohammed, who was subjected to waterboarding 183 times.”
Other information revealed by the new information “included
confirmation that detainees Hawsawi, bin al-Shibh, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri
were held and questioned at a specific black site in Guantánamo called Echo 2
between late 2003 and early 2004. That is the same location where they were
questioned after being returned to Guantánamo in September 2006 and where
detainee meetings with defense attorneys are still held.”
Previously, the FBI had always maintained that it was separate to
the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme. While the US “government claims that the
defendants’ incriminating statements at Guantanamo were voluntary and thus
should be admissible in court” as they were made using conventional
interview techniques, Connell stated that the “new disclosures on CIA-FBI coordination
significantly strengthened his position that the statements were, in fact,
obtained by torture as part of one large interrogation program spanning the
black sites and Guantanamo Bay.”
As part of the hearing, the
testimony of FBI agents who had interviewed the defendants was heard and the
question of “whether the FBI’s involvement in the CIA’s black-site
interrogations should disallow statements provided later, in 2007, in
interrogations by the FBI”, their suppression, was raised. One of the
witnesses, FBI Special Agent James Fitzgerald, whose testimony took up most of
the second week of the hearing, confirmed that “he and his colleagues sent
hundreds of interrogation questions to the CIA while the defendants were at the
black sites, and that the CIA had sent cables back with significant amounts of
information that is now relevant to the case.”
Future pre-trial hearings are
expected to deal with suppression motions to exclude statements made under
duress of torture to the FBI by other defendants and hear the testimony of
other witnesses.
In the third week, before the end
of the suppression motion hearing, defence and prosecution lawyers argued over
who was causing delays to the case and the feasibility of the schedule set by
Judge Cohen in order to meet his date set for the trial to begin in January
2021.
Extraordinary Rendition:
A report by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security in
New Zealand has found that intelligence agencies in the country did not know
that information they received from US agencies was obtained through torture
even though they knew it came from individuals held at secret locations; thus
the country’s intelligence agencies (SIS and GCSB) have been cleared of
complicity and involvement in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme. New
Zealand launched an inquiry into its role in the CIA programme in 2015
following the 2014 publication of the redacted US Senate report on the issue
which revealed many details of the programme. Nonetheless, the report found
that the agencies had “received many intelligence reports obtained from
detainees who had been tortured.” The report looked at New Zealand’s role and
possible connections to the rendition programme between 2001 and 2009 and
whether there were adequate guidelines in place to deal with involvement and
operations with foreign intelligence. In response the agencies have said they “will
look at disposing of, or sealing, any intelligence reports received from the
CIA as a result of torture”.
Although the findings absolve the agencies of involvement in the
rendition programme, they still knew the US was arbitrarily and illegally
holding detainees and yet still put questions to the CIA to ask them, thus
condoning part of the illegal action of the US. One of the people to whom
questions was put is current Guantánamo prisoner, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who
was then being held at a secret CIA torture prison. The 2014 report revealed he
had been waterboarded 183 and he is currently potentially facing the death
penalty at Guantánamo on the basis of evidence obtained through the use of
torture. In addition, New Zealand agencies could have contributed information
that led to the tortured detainees being captured.
In a deposition case as to whether two CIA contractor psychologists
who helped to design the CIA extraordinary rendition programmes, James E.
Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, can be questioned as part of an investigation
in Poland into the extraordinary rendition and torture of Guantánamo prisoner
Abu Zubaydah, the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 2-1 to
allow the two men to answer limited questions by the investigation and for the
first time in a court called the treatment Abu Zubaydah received “torture”. Abu
Zubaydah was held in Poland from December 2002 to September 2003 at a secret
CIA facility and tortured. He has successfully prosecuted the Polish state for
this at the European Court of Human Rights, acknowledging he was tortured.
Poland was only one of the countries he was shuttled between and tortured after
his kidnap in 2002 and until he arrived at Guantánamo in 2006, by which time
the CIA has not only conceded they had the wrong man but were willing to admit
it. He nonetheless remains at Guantánamo, secluded from other prisoners, and
has never faced charge or trial.
LGC Activities:
The October Shut Guantánamo! demo will be on 3rd October
at 12-2pm outside the US Embassy, Nine Elms Lane, SW11 (nearest underground:
Vauxhall): https://www.facebook.com/events/3700619786630763/
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