WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – A United States military judge has ruled that an Al-Qaeda bombing suspect’s confession cannot be used as evidence because it was derived from torture, potentially setting a new hurdle for September 11 prosecutions.
The judge in the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba U.S. military tribunals said that a confession by Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 attack against the USS Cole in Yemen which left 17 dead, was tainted by years of abuse at the hands of the CIA and FBI, a report by the AFP said on Saturday.
“Exclusion of such evidence is not without societal costs,” wrote the judge, Colonel Lanny Acosta.
“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 military judge added.
Al-Nashiri’s attorney Anthony Natale said the judge threw out key evidence military prosecutors hoped to use to convict his client.
Attorneys for both Nashiri and five other suspects -- accused of involvement in the September 11 attacks and held captive and tortured for decades without trial or legal representation -- have struggled for over 10 years now in the Guantanamo military court to exclude evidence against them that was coerced through torture.
The six were captured separately after the 2001 attacks and shuttled through CIA-run “black sites” in numerous U.S.-allied countries across the globe, such as Thailand and Poland, where they were subjected to intense torture techniques, including waterboarding, physical beatings and sleep deprivation.
Following the arrival of the captives at the Guantanamo military prison, some of them, including Nashiri were again subjected to intense interrogation and torture by FBI agents in early 2007 and other instances.
The judge’s decision comes as obtaining confession from prisoners through torture remains a major violation of international law.
The U.S. military has accused Nashiri of being an Al-Qaeda recruiter that plotted various attacks on American interests in the Arabian Peninsula.
U.S. troops captured Nashiri in 2002 and transferred him to the Guantanamo prison in 2006 after he remained for four years in the custody of CIA interrogators and repeatedly tortured.
In September 2011, he was charged by a U.S. military commission on nine counts related to his alleged involvement in planning Al-Qaeda attacks.
His military trial showcased by the very entity that captured and tortured him has repeatedly faced delays, due to insistence by his assigned military lawyers that he suffered repeated torture while under detention of the CIA spy agency collaborating with U.S. military forces occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.