Group Seeks Release of U.S. Torture Tapes

By Adam Klasfeld, Courthouse News Service

The Center for Constitutional Rights wants the Pentagon, CIA and Justice Department to disclose the interrogation tapes of accused Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed al Qahtani, the only Guantanamo detainee that officials admit was tortured.
In a telephone conference Monday, attorneys from the rights group said they have seen the classified videos, but have been gagged from describing them.
"I can say that I found them very disturbing, sickening even," said Sandra Babcock, adding that the videos "have the power to change the debate" on Guantanamo and indefinite detention.
Captured in the Battle of Tora Bora, the U.S. government accused al-Qahtani of plotting to be the "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
A Pentagon official announced in 2008 that charges would be dropped against him "without prejudice" and without explanation, the BBC reported.
A military prosecutor brought charges months later to a convening authority, which chose not reinstate them, according to Center for Constitutional Rights spokeswoman Jen Nessel.
One year into his interrogations, Qahtani became "already mentally and physically broken," the rights group says in its new federal complaint.
The FBI observed that Qahtani was "talking to nonexistent people, reporting hearing voices [and] crouching in a corner of the cell covered with a sheet for hours on end," according to the complaint.
While Qahtani was in this mental state, military interrogators introduced a "First Special Interrogation Plan," overruling FBI concerns about "efficacy, coercion and possible illegality," according to a New York Times report cited in the complaint.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized the protocols, which are described in the complaint.
"From 2002 to 2003, while he was detained at Guantanamo, Mr. al Qahtani was subjected to systematic twenty-hour interrogations, prolonged sleep deprivation, forced nudity, sexual and religious humiliation, and other interrogation tactics that were both uniquely harsh and approved at the highest levels, and which caused Mr. al Qahtani severe physical and psychological trauma," the complaint states.

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