This text was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Heart on Disaster Reporting.GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — A heated dispute erupted on Friday on th
This text was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Heart on Disaster Reporting.
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — A heated dispute erupted on Friday on the pretrial hearings for the accused conspirators within the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults over the usage of the phrase “torture” to explain C.I.A. interrogations, and the army choose declared that he would wish to contemplate the query earlier than the beginning of the death-penalty trial subsequent 12 months.
The choose, Col. W. Shane Cohen of the Air Force, mentioned it might be his function to determine earlier than the trial whether or not what occurred to the defendants within the C.I.A. jail community was “torture” or “merciless, inhuman and degrading punishment.” Jury choice is scheduled to begin on Jan. 11, 2021.
“The opinion of the Division of Justice, the Legal professional Basic and even the President of america shouldn’t be binding on me,” Colonel Cohen mentioned, referring to authorized memos from the Bush administration that licensed brutal interrogation strategies like waterboarding that are actually outlawed as torture.
With such a discovering, a army fee choose may determine to exclude sure proof from the trial, dismiss the case or forestall the prosecution from looking for the dying penalty.
James E. Mitchell, a contract psychologist who waterboarded and interrogated prisoners for the C.I.A., was testifying for a fourth day concerning the “enhanced interrogation strategies” that have been used on all 5 defendants within the terror trial. He bristled at the usage of the phrase “torture.”
He mentioned the strategies that he and one other psychologist, John Bruce Jessen, drew up in 2002 for the intelligence company had obtained presidential approval, in addition to approval from the Justice Division and different areas of america authorities.
Walter B. Ruiz, a protection lawyer, had simply recited a few of the ways that one of many defendants, Mustafa al Hawsawi, endured at a C.I.A. jail in Afghanistan in 2003 — when Dr. Mitchell was not there — together with 72 hours of standing sleep deprivation, being hung nude from a ceiling and being strapped to a crude picket board and having water poured on him.
“Did you have got any sense of all of the torture he had endured?” Mr. Ruiz mentioned.
“Objection,” mentioned Jeffrey D. Groharing, one of many prosecutors. “Details not in proof.”
Mr. Groharing has persistently protested the usage of the phrase “torture,” calling the time period a authorized conclusion that has not been made.
“I’m not going to sanitize it for his or her comfort,” Mr. Ruiz informed the choose. “I’m not going to make the most of language which may be extra acceptable and digestible.”
Mr. Hawsawi was in courtroom for the showdown, wearing conventional white Saudi robes and head scarf and sitting on a donut-shaped pillow. A Senate Intelligence Committee examine of the C.I.A. program mentioned Mr. Hawsawi was subjected to rectal abuse in Afghanistan.
Throughout an earlier effort to carry a trial within the Sept. 11 case, beginning in 2008, protection legal professionals have been warned that the mere point out of the phrase “torture” would immediate a safety officer to chop the audio from the courtroom earlier than the general public may hear it, on a 40-second delay. It might take years and declassification of parts of a Senate Intelligence Committee examine earlier than Mr. Hawsawi’s legal professionals may even clarify in courtroom why he wanted the pillow.
On Friday, the choose mentioned that “individuals throw round phrases within the vernacular” however mentioned that in the end he would be the one to determine the legality of what occurred to the 5 males within the C.I.A. jail community from 2002 to 2006.
The showdown occurred earlier than a lunchtime recess. Dr. Mitchell later mentioned he doesn’t use the phrase “torture” to explain the strategies used on the detainees “as a result of in my coaching that may be a dedication that needs to be made by a choose in courtroom.”