Legal News

Defense Department Jettisons Charges Against ?20th Hijacker?

By Dan Slater

On the Gitmo front, the last several weeks have brought the Bush administration a series of legal defeats. First, Gitmo’s former chief prosecutor turned against the Pentagon, testifying that political interference had tainted the military commissions, set up to prosecute detainees. Then a key legal adviser to the war crimes system was barred from having any further role in the case of Salim Hamdan. The latest: The Defense Department has thrown out all charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, one of the “Gitmo Six” and the alleged “20th hijacker” in the 9/11 attacks.

The decision, according to reports, was issued without explanation by Susan Crawford, the so-called Convening Authority who acts as an administrator and chief magistrate of the offshore trial system and must approve charges proposed by prosecutors. (Prosecutors can still modify the charges against Qahtani.) Reports: WSJ, NYT.

A source told the WSJ that Crawford had seen “a real difference in the level of culpability” between Qahtani and the other five prisoners proposed for the 9/11 trial. Unlike Qahtani, the other five were held for years at secret CIA prisons because of their alleged importance, and were transferred to Gitmo in 2006 when President Bush was seeking to persuade Congress to authorize the offshore justice system.

In 2002, after military interrogators concluded that Qahtani, who’d been captured in December, 2001 after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, had ceased providing useful intelligence, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved special interrogation methods for him. Qahtani was interrogated for up to 20 hours a day for 48 days, made to wear women’s underwear, subjected to deafening music and leashed like a dog.

Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles, Qahtani’s lawyer, said, “The government evidence is derived by torture. . . . If they have such statements that were not obtained through torture and they are evidence of his involvement in this conspiracy, you’d think that was enough to go forward.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 14, 2008 (boomark / email).