WASHINGTON: A Pentagon official acknowledged in an interview published yesterday that the United States tortured Mohammed Al-Qahtani, a Saudi man who allegedly had hoped to become the “20th hijacker” in the Sept. 11 attacks.
“We tortured Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, a retired judge who was appointed convening authority of military commissions in February 2007. Crawford was interviewed by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward.
Al-Qahtani was one of six men charged by the military in February 2008 with murder and war crimes for their alleged roles in the 2001 attacks.
But in May, Crawford decided to dismiss the charges against Al-Qahtani, who was being held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
His Pentagon-appointed attorney, Army Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles, suggested at the time that his client’s harsh interrogation, authorized by the defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, could have influenced the decision.
“In any instance in which the United States wishes to impose the death penalty, my opinion is that such a case requires clean hands on the part of the US,” Broyles told the Associated Press in May.
US authorities had acknowledged that Al-Qahtani was subjected to waterboarding by CIA interrogators and that he was treated harshly at Guantanamo.
Al-Qahtani in October 2006 recanted a confession he said he made after he was tortured and humiliated at Guantanamo.
The torture, which he detailed in a written statement, included being beaten, restrained for long periods in uncomfortable positions, threatened with dogs, exposed to loud music and freezing temperatures and stripped nude in front of female personnel. In the interview published by the Post yesterday, Crawford said: “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that is why I did not refer the case” for prosecution. President-elect Barack Obama transition officials told US media one of his first acts as the new US president could be to order the closure of the controversial “war on terror” detention camp in Cuba.
Obama, who takes office on Jan. 20 and promised during the presidential campaign to close the site, will likely shutter Guantanamo by issuing an executive order suspending President George W. Bush’s military commissions system for trying detainees, Obama transition officials told US media.
However, it could take several months to fully close down the detention camp, as US officials will have to transfer some of the 248 prisoners there to other countries and then decide whether to try the remaining suspects.
The site, established in early 2002 following the US-led offensive in Afghanistan, was designed to hold suspected terrorists who the Bush administration claimed were not covered by the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war because they were “enemy combatants,” fighting for a non-state organization.
Over the years some 800 detainees have gone through Guantanamo, including 520 transferred to other countries to be held or released.
Of the remaining inmates, only about 20 have been charged, including five men accused of helping organize the Sept.11 attacks in the United States.
About 60 prisoners deemed no longer a threat have been cleared for transfer or release, but their home countries have been reluctant to take them.
Unclear is the fate of Omar Khadr, a Canadian captured in Afghanistan in 2002 at age 15 and charged with killing a US soldier with a hand grenade. His trial is due to open on Jan. 26, six days after Obama takes office.
