Military Judge Rejects 9/11 Plotter’s Confession Citing Torture‑tainted Interrogation

In a significant setback for the United States’ prosecution of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of the September 11 attacks, a military judge ruled Friday that the defendant’s statements to FBI investigators were involuntary and therefore inadmissible at trial.

The government has pointed to Mohammed’s 2007 interrogations at the U.S. Naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as the cornerstone of its capital case.

The admissibility of those confessions has long been contested, as the government employed coercive methods in secret CIA detention facilities prior to his formal charges.

The decision, issued just ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks, threatens to prolong the trial’s start if the prosecution pursues an appeal. Survivors and victims’ families, many of whom are aging, have expressed concerns that a final resolution may never be reached.

Earlier this week, the judge scheduled the trial to commence on June 5, 2028.

Mohammed is alleged to be the mastermind behind the coordinated hijackings that claimed nearly 3,000 lives in New York, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon.

Following his capture in 2003, Mohammed was subjected to harsh CIA interrogation in overseas secret prisons and remained incommunicado until his transfer to Guantánamo in 2006. The prosecution has already excluded statements obtained during those sessions, which involved 183 waterboarding sessions, from the case.

Trial judge Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama went a step further, determining that Mohammed’s subsequent 2007 Guantánamo interrogations were also inadmissible.

“The prosecution has not demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Mohammed’s FBI statements were made voluntarily,” Schrama wrote in the concluding portion of his 45‑page ruling, which has yet to be publicly released but whose unclassified substance was verified by several attorneys who reviewed it.

Schrama highlighted several considerations, among them an “uninterrupted continuation of the CIA’s psychological conditioning and severe coercion” during Mohammed’s 2007 Guantánamo questioning.

He further determined that FBI agents deliberately omitted informing Mohammed of his right to remain silent, his right to counsel, and that his statements could be used against him in court.

Lead prosecutor Rear Admiral Aaron C. Rugh indicated that his office would examine the decision and decide whether to appeal shortly.

Under the applicable rules, the prosecution has five days to determine whether to appeal, with the possibility of requesting a five‑day extension.

Defense attorneys contended that Mohammed was essentially conditioned by CIA torture, combined with years of isolation and solitary confinement, to provide the statements the FBI sought. He was denied access to counsel until well after his confession and formal charges.

Mohammed’s attorney, Gary Sowards, described the ruling as “a civics lesson illustrating why the government should refrain from such shameful practices.”

Without the confessions, the prosecution would have to rely on documentary evidence, phone intercepts, and transcripts of other communications to pursue the case. Some of those materials are also under dispute.

Nevertheless, under Guantánamo’s indefinite detention framework, the United States maintains that Mohammed can be held indefinitely, even absent a trial or conviction, as part of its counterterrorism efforts.

The trial is intended to detail how 19 hijackers from the Middle East entered the United States to carry out the deadliest terrorist attack in the nation’s history.

Mohammed is alleged to have conceived the plot in the 1990s, presented it to Osama bin Laden, and assisted in selecting and training the hijackers.

Schrama has not yet issued rulings on the confessions of two additional 9/11 defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al‑Hawsawi. Previously, Colonel Matthew McCall excluded the statements of Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al‑Baluchi, who is charged with providing financial and travel assistance to the hijackers.

In a separate case, Colonel Lanny Acosta excluded the confession of Abd al‑Rahim al‑Nashiri, the defendant in the USS Cole bombing, after explicitly concluding that he had been subjected to CIA torture. Al‑Nashiri’s capital trial for the 2000 attack that claimed the lives of 17 American sailors is slated to begin in October.

The 9/11 case has been entangled in pretrial proceedings since the 2012 arraignment. Over the years, four other judges have gathered evidence on the issue Schrama addressed Friday. An earlier judicial officer determined that a fifth defendant, Ramzi bin al‑Shibh, is mentally incompetent to stand trial—a condition his defense attributes to torture.

Source link