This text was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Middle on Disaster Reporting.GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — The C.I.A. contractor who interrogated
This text was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Middle on Disaster Reporting.
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — The C.I.A. contractor who interrogated Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the person accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001 terror assaults, testified on Monday that he threatened to kill one in every of Mr. Mohammed’s sons if there was one other assault on America.
James E. Mitchell, a psychologist who helped develop the C.I.A.’s interrogation program, stated he made the risk after he had waterboarded Mr. Mohammed for the 183rd time. He stated he did so after he consulted a lawyer on the company’s Counterterrorism Middle about how you can make the risk with out violating “the Torture Conference.”
He stated he was suggested to make the risk conditional.
So, earlier than telling Mr. Mohammed, “I’ll lower your son’s throat,” Dr. Mitchell stated, he added a collection of caveats. They included “if there was one other catastrophic assault in the US,” if Mr. Mohammed withheld “data that would have stopped it,” and “if one other American little one was killed.”
Dr. Mitchell was testifying in a pretrial listening to that has been centered partially on the torture of the defendants within the Sept. 11 case earlier than they have been despatched to the army jail at Guantánamo Bay.
Dr. Mitchell stated he made the risk in March 2003 as “an emotional flag” as he was transitioning from waterboarding and different violent “enhanced interrogation methods” to extra conventional questioning of Mr. Mohammed.
Pakistani safety forces reportedly seized Mr. Mohammed’s sons, Abed, 7, and Yusuf, 9, in September 2002 in a joint raid with United States forces that seized Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one other defendant within the 9/11 conflict crimes case. Mr. Mohammed could be captured in Pakistan six months later. He was at a C.I.A. black website in Poland later that month when Dr. Mitchell made the risk.
The boys have been subsequently launched and are believed to be dwelling in Iran, with their mom, however Mr. Mohammed apparently didn’t know the destiny of the boys till a few years later, after the C.I.A. transferred him to the Pentagon-run jail advanced at Guantánamo Bay.
It was one of the crucial emotional moments in 5 days of testimony by Dr. Mitchell on the question of torture earlier than the trial of 5 males accused of conspiracy within the assaults is scheduled to begin subsequent 12 months. He was unapologetic.
Dr. Mitchell stated that eight kids died within the 9/11 hijackings that killed 2,976 individuals in New York, Pennsylvania and on the Pentagon. Then he gestured towards Mr. Mohammed, who was sitting along with his attorneys 25 toes away and declared, “He’s smirking.”
The smirk, or any emotion, was not seen from a spectator’s gallery behind the court docket. Mr. Mohammed appeared emotionless all through the testimony, sometimes fingering his lengthy orange-dyed beard, whereas his lawyer, David Nevin, questioned Dr. Mitchell.
“Do you suppose that telling somebody that may instill worry in that individual?” Mr. Nevin requested.
“Sure I do,” Mr. Mitchell replied. “That was the one time that I made that risk to him.”
Dr. Mitchell stated he invoked Mr. Mohammed’s kids throughout interrogations once more that very same month, March 2003, in urgent for particulars on the whereabouts of Mr. Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi. Mr. Mitchell quoted himself as saying it might be “safer” for Mr. Mohammed’s household to assist the US discover Mr. al-Baluchi reasonably than “have him operating round and the U.S. dropping a missile on him.”
Mr. al-Baluchi, who’s charged in the identical case with serving to the 9/11 hijackers with cash transfers and journey preparations from the United Arab Emirates, the place he labored on the time, was captured in Pakistan in April 2003 in a automobile with one other defendant within the case, Walid bin Attash.
Zeke Johnson, a program director for Amnesty Worldwide who was watching the proceedings, stated the risk to kill one in every of Mr. Mohammed’s kids little question broke the legislation.
“Threatening to kill a detainee’s little one would violate the Conference Towards Torture and be unlawful,” Mr. Johnson stated. “Anybody who broke the legislation should be held accountable — from these on the high who ordered it to those that carried it out.”