Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has thrown out the plea deal for three 9/11 defendants who are being held at Guantanamo Bay, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The pre-trial agreement would have avoided the death penalty in exchange for guilty pleas. Defense lawyers requested life sentences.
A key factor in reaching the original agreement was that much of the evidence may be inadmissible because it was obtained through the use of torture.
Mohammed was subjected to 183 instances of waterboarding. In addition, FBI memos reveal that interrogators wrapped terrorism suspects at Guantanamo in Israeli flags and forced them to watch homosexual pornography under strobe lights in sessions that lasted up to 18 hours.
The Senate intelligence committee conducted a five-year investigation into the CIA’s post 9/11 torture program. The committee issued a 525 page summary of its “Torture Report.” Here are two of the central conclusions:
“The use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of obtaining accurate information or gaining detainee cooperation… The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.”
The Center for Victims of Torture notes that CIA detainees “fabricated information just to stop the pain.”
George Washington University’s online National Security Archive includes a section called “The Torture Archive,” which details U.S. involvement in torture. It contains over 16,000 documents, as well as the award-winning documentary film “Torturing Democracy.”
Notably, the United States is a party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which allows no circumstances under which torture is permitted.
On September 14, 2001, when Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) cast the lone vote in opposition to a resolution authorizing the war in Afghanistan, she declared, “As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.”
Let’s heed the words of human rights organization Amnesty International:
“The use of torture destroys people, corrodes the rule of law, undermines the criminal justice system and erodes public trust in public institutions and the state they represent. It causes severe pain and suffering to victims which continues long after the acts of torture stop. And it doesn’t work.”
Terry Hansen
Milwaukee, WI