Military Court to Determine if Confessions by 9/11 Defendants Are Admissible

Lawdragon reported that military prosecutors at the Gitmo Gulag argued before a military judge that the CIA’s brutal treatment of accused 9/11 conspirators at overseas black sites did not permanently taint confessions they made to law enforcement after they left the CIA’s custody.

For example, they allege that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) voluntarily confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attacks while he was no longer in CIA custody. While in CIA custody, KSM was tortured through various methods. For example, he was waterboarded at least 183 times, thrown against walls, deprived of sleep, put in stress positions, and endured rectal rehydration.

The purpose of the CIA torturing a detainee was to coerce the detainee to say whatever it was that the CIA wanted him to say rather than to ascertain the truth. The 9/11 attacks, which were enabled by the US national-security state, occurred almost 25 years ago, yet the trials of the alleged conspirators are still in the pre-trial phase because the alleged conspirators were tortured through various methods. Not only are statements extracted through torture unreliable, but it is also a violation of domestic and international law to torture a detainee.

Last year, the military court ruled that statements made by KSM’s nephew, Ammar al Baluchi, were inadmissible because the CIA tortured and conditioned him to become compliant in any government questioning and that his subsequent confessions to the FBI were involuntary.  Also, last year the US Court of Military Commission Review upheld the suppression of statements made by Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who is an alleged mastermind of the USS Cole attack. He was tortured by the CIA and gave a subsequent confession to the FBI that was ruled to be inadmissible.

If the US national-security state was interested in providing justice to the victims of the 9/11 attacks, it would not have tortured the alleged conspirators and would have used legal means to obtain evidence against the alleged conspirators.  Unfortunately, the 9/11 attacks were immediately treated as an act of war instead of as a crime.  For almost 25 years, the public has been deprived the truth regarding the 9/11 attacks.

The 9/11 attacks were beneficial to the US national-security state because the attacks provided an excuse to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The US national-security state gave US visas to known al-Qaeda operatives who were the future alleged 9/11 hijackers and allowed them to live openly in the United States, while Saudi intelligence officials provided them financial and logistical support.  The CIA even blocked two FBI detailees to the CIA’s Bin Laden Issue Station, codenamed Alec Station, from notifying the FBI that al-Qaeda operative and future alleged hijacker, Khalid al-Mihdhar, had an unexpired US visa.  The CIA and NSA were also monitoring all al-Qaeda communications to and from the al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen.   Meanwhile, Israeli operatives, who were selling artwork to employees of US government agencies, were also spying on the alleged hijackers prior to 9/11.

“America’s last president”, John F. Kennedy, declared in 1962, “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

While the truth regarding the 9/11 attacks is unpleasant, we owe it to the 3,000 victims murdered on 9/11 and the millions of people murdered in the wars of aggression launched after 9/11 to demand the truth and to not accept the lies, distortions, and omissions of the US national-security state.