Gitmo inmate tortured, U.S. official says
Reuters News Service
January 15, 2009
theglobeandmail.com
[Now that the Bush cabal is oozing its way out of the White House, truth can finally be spoken.]
WASHINGTON -- The official overseeing tribunals for Guantanamo Bay inmates has said the U.S. military tortured a Saudi man accused of planning to take part in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, prompting calls for his release.
"We tortured [Mohammed al-] Qahtani," Susan Crawford said in an interview with the Washington Post published yesterday. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.
Ms. Crawford, a retired judge who also worked in the Reagan administration, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.
President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have said the United States does not torture.
The American Civil Liberties Union described the admission as "stunning," but said the Bush administration was still planning, on its final full day in office, to prosecute other detainees who had been tortured.
A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 19, a day before president-elect Barack Obama takes office. He is expected to issue an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.
Ms. Crawford told the Post the techniques used in Mr. Qahtani's case were authorized but applied in an overly aggressive and too persistent manner.
"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, Ms. Crawford said.
Mr. Cheney said he did not know the details of Mr. Qahtani's interrogation, but defended the use of aggressive techniques, which he insisted were legal, to gain information.
"It's entirely possible that it was a problem in terms of how one specific prisoner was handled. I can't claim perfection," Mr. Cheney told PBS television's News Hour.
"I can tell you that we had all the legal authorization we needed to do it, including the sign-off of the Justice Department," he said.
"I can tell you it produced phenomenal results for us and a great many Americans are alive today because we did all that."
U.S. defence officials said a review of Mr. Qahtani's 2002 interrogation concluded the methods were lawful at the time. |
