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9/11 suspect in Gitmo 'faced threat to life'
The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the US military tortured a Saudi national, who allegedly planned to participate in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
- By Bob Woodward, Los Angeles Washington Post Service
- Published: 21:43 January 14, 2009
Washington: The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the US military tortured a Saudi national, who allegedly planned to participate in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
They interrogated him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition".
"We tortured [Mohammad Al] Qah'tani," said Susan Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defence Secretary Robert Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.
Reviewing practices
Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector-general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defence, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.
Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Al Qah'tani's health led to her conclusion. "The techniques they used were all authorised, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. ... You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said.
Military prosecutors said in November they would seek to refile charges against Al Qah'tani, 30, based on subsequent interrogations that did not employ harsh techniques. But Crawford, who dismissed war crimes charges against him in May 2008, said in the interview that she would not allow the prosecution to go forward.
Denied entry
Al Qah'tani was denied entry into the US a month before the September 11 attacks and was allegedly planning to be the plot's 20th hijacker. He was later captured in Afghanistan and transported to Guantanamo in January 2002. His interrogation took place over 50 days and he was held in isolation until April 2003.
"For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators," said Crawford, who reviewed Al Qah'tani's interrogation records. "Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18- to 20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister."
Al Qah'tani "was forced to wear a woman's bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation... [and] was told that his mother and sister were whores."
The interrogation was so intense that Al Qah'tani had to be hospitalised twice at Guantanamo with bradycardia, where the heart rate falls below 60 beats a minute and which in extreme cases can lead to heart failure and death.
Assertions fall flat
President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have said that interrogations never involved torture. "The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values," Bush asserted on September 6, 2006, when 14 high-value detainees were transferred to Guantanamo from secret CIA prisons. And in a interview last week Cheney said, "And I think on the left wing of the Democratic Party, there are some people who believe that we really tortured.
"We have conducted more than a dozen investigations and reviews of our detention operations, including specifically the interrogation of Mohammad Al Qah'tani, the alleged 20th hijacker. They concluded the interrogation methods used at GTMO, including the special techniques used on Qah'tani in 2002, were lawful." Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.
However, subsequently the Department adopted new and more restrictive policies and procedures for interrogation and detention operations.
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