World | USA
9/11 trial could reignite rights debate
Military commission must rule on legality of confessions extracted under duress.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:20 February 13, 2008
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Washington: A trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, meant to exact justice for the September 11 attacks, will also fuel debate over whether the United States violated human rights when it subjected prisoners to waterboarding and other harsh treatment in its war on terrorism, analysts said.
The Pentagon's announcement on Monday that it was charging Mohammad and five others with murder for the 2001 attacks and seeking the death penalty was made only days after the CIA said Mohammad was one of three suspects subjected to waterboarding.
The simulated-drowning interrogation technique has become the focus for debate in Congress and abroad over US treatment of terrorism suspects. The UN human rights chief last week said waterboarding should be prosecuted as torture.
Serious bind
Civil rights advocates and terrorism analysts said its use on Mohammad, coupled with questions over the legitimacy of the military commissions set up in 2006 to try terrorism suspects, threatened to undermine the credibility of any verdict.
"The government has now placed itself in a serious bind - first by subjecting him to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques that the world regards as torture, and now by trying him in a military commission proceeding that allows the use of coerced testimony and that much of the world regards as illegitimate," said Steven Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"The fact that they are seeking the death penalty, which much of the world has rejected, both increases the stakes and will increase the scrutiny," he said.
But Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Centre for Terrorism Law at St Mary's University in Texas, said despite likely protests and obstacles, he was confident the government had a firm case. "These people need to be punished for their crimes," he said.
The mistreatment of prisoners during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as of foreign terrorist suspects held at the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba has seriously undermined the US reputation as an advocate of human rights. All six being charged for the September 11 attacks have been held at Guantanamo.
Mohammad and four others were subjected to the CIA's interrogation programme launched after September 11. The programme involved in some cases so-called "enhanced" or harsh interrogation measures, but Mohammad was the only one of the charged group said to have been waterboarded.
"This is a crucial milestone on the road to justice for the victims of 9/11," CIA Director General Michael Hayden said in a letter to employees. "Our government believes that these six individuals, among others, played important roles in planning and promoting the murder of thousands of innocent people."
Planning
Mohammad, a Pakistani national, has said he planned every aspect of the September 11 attacks.
The commission must almost certainly rule on whether waterboarding is torture and whether Mohammad's confession can be admitted as evidence, Addicott said. The commissions do not allow use of evidence obtained by torture.
The United States insists it does not torture and that its use of waterboarding was legal. But Hayden, two days after publicly confirming the use of waterboarding, said last week it may no longer be legal given changes in US law.
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