Guantánamo
Prisoner Charges Confession Extracted Through Torture
By Kate Randall
01 April, 2007
World
Socialist Web
A
Guantánamo detainee has charged that he was tortured into confessing
to a role in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri,
41, a Saudi national of Yemeni descent, said he faced years of torture
following his arrest in 2002 and that he fabricated stories to satisfy
his captors.
Al-Nashiri was one of 14
detainees moved by the US to the Guantánamo prison camp last
September. These 14 “high-value” detainees were transferred
following the exposure of a network of CIA-run secret prisons around
the world and the Bush administration’s acknowledgement of the
prisons’ existence.
Military hearings are currently
underway at Guantánamo to determine these prisoners’ “enemy
combatant” status. Once this is confirmed, they can be held indefinitely
before being brought before a military commission, which would have
the power to condemn them to death.
The Pentagon released a redacted
transcript of testimony given by al-Nashiri at a closed-door hearing
held March 14 at Guantánamo. His charges of torture underscore
the illegal character of the detention of the Guantánamo prisoners
and the thoroughly antidemocratic character of the military hearings,
which deny defendants the rudiments of due process. Al-Nashiri’s
statements also demonstrate that the purported confessions extracted
from prisoners held for months on end—without charges, without
legal counsel and without contact with the outside world—are,
from a legitimate legal standpoint, worthless.
“From the time I was
arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me,” al-Nashiri
testified at the hearing. “It happened during interviews. One
time they tortured me one way, and another time they tortured me in
a different way.
“I just said those
things to make the people happy,” the transcript reads. “They
were very happy when I told them those things.”
According to US intelligence,
al-Nashiri is the “mastermind” of the October 12, 2000 attack
on the USS Cole, which left 17 US sailors dead and almost succeeded
in sinking the $1 billion destroyer.
The US alleges that he was
the leader of Al Qaeda’s operations in the Persian Gulf at the
time and was tasked by Osama bin Laden to organize the attack. In the
transcript provided by the Pentagon, al-Nashiri says he met with the
Al Qaeda leader numerous times and received as much as a half-million
dollars from him. He says the money was for “personal expenses,”
including purchasing a boat and developing a fishing business.
According to the Pentagon
transcript, al-Nashiri says bin Laden told him later that the funds
could be used for a bombing. He said he ended the project and was not
involved when bin Laden later used it for what he described as a “military
tool.”
Al-Nashiri’s charge
that his confession was extracted through torture comes two weeks after
the release of another transcript by the Pentagon, which it claimed
proved the role of another prisoner now held at Guantánamo in
orchestrating the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The confession of Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed supplied by the Pentagon from his March 10 hearing had
him taking responsibility for dozens of terrorist plots and attacks
spanning 15 years and at least five continents. This transcript, like
that for al-Nashiri, was replete with multiple redactions, blacking
out sections of Mohammed’s statement that dealt with torture.
The media was quick to trumpet
Mohammed’s alleged confession, headlining it in newspapers and
on television news programs. They focused on the most sensational aspects
of his testimony—in which he reportedly took responsibility for
the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing
and the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, in addition
to 9/11.
The Pentagon’s release
of the Mohammed transcript served the purpose of diverting attention
from the worsening US debacle in Iraq and the exposure of illegal actions
by the Bush administration at home, particularly its purge of federal
prosecutors.
By contrast, media coverage
of the testimony of al-Nashiri has been negligible, with reporting generally
confined to reprints of a short Associated Press story. The reason is
not hard to fathom: this news item cannot be used to lend legitimacy
to the Bush administration’s “war on terror” or boost
lagging public support for the war in Iraq.
The timing of the release
of the two transcripts is also worthy of note. While the Pentagon released
its transcript of Mohammed’s March 10 hearing within five days,
the release of al-Nashiri’s March 14 testimony was delayed more
than two weeks.
The entire operation of the
“combatant status review tribunals” is a judicial sham.
Prisoners are represented by government officials, not attorneys, and
face a panel of three military officers. Reporters are barred from the
hearings, and the Pentagon decides what testimony it will make public.
Any material deemed “damaging to national security” is blacked
out.
The Bush administration invokes
these “national security” concerns in an effort to conceal
the appalling realities of Guantánamo and the workings of the
clandestine prisons the US operated in countries around the world. US
intelligence agents have rounded up an unknown number of individuals
in “extraordinary renditions”—sending them to these
prisons and others operated by foreign governments, where they face
torture. Many of these prisoners were eventually sent to Guantánamo.
The secrecy surrounding the
Guantánamo proceedings is also aimed at protecting the countries—including
Jordan, Egypt, Poland, Thailand and Morocco—which have hosted
CIA prisons or held detainees in their own prisons.
Most of the estimated 385
prisoners still detained at Guantánamo were rounded up by US
military and intelligence forces following the October, 2001 invasion
of Afghanistan. According to the Pentagon, 111 detainees were either
released or transferred from the prison camp in 2006, resulting in a
cumulative total of approximately 390 detainees released or transferred
since 2002.
While the majority detained
are Afghan, Saudi, Yemeni or Pakistani, there are prisoners from dozens
of other countries. Human rights organizations charge that many of those
who have been released and returned to their home countries face torture.
The US dismisses such charges with the claim that it has received “diplomatic
assurances” from governments—many known to conduct torture—that
the returning detainees will be treated humanely.
Human Rights Watch on Wednesday
challenged this practice, saying that governments with records of torture
“don’t suddenly change their behavior” because of
agreements with Washington. The organization cited the cases of seven
Russians who were released from Guantánamo because the US lacked
evidence to prosecute them. Six of the seven interviewed by the human
rights group said they had begged US officials not to be returned to
Russia. Following diplomatic assurances from the Russian government
that they would be treated humanely, they were returned there.
Human Rights Watch reports,
“The Russian authorities have variously harassed, detained, mistreated
and beaten the former Guantánamo detainees since they returned.”
The US faces mounting international
condemnation of the Guantánamo prison. In testimony before the
House Defense Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday, Defense Secretary
Robert Gates called on Congress to work out an arrangement with the
Bush administration to close the prison to deflect this criticism, while
insuring that a number of “hard-core” detainees are imprisoned
indefinitely.
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