US Attorney General Eric Holder recently announced that five detainees would be moved from Guantanamo Bay to New York, where they would stand trial for carrying out the 9/11 attacks. However, five other detainees will continue to be tried before military commissions, which have lower standards of evidence. The five detainees coming to New York have previously indicated they intend to plead guilty, although the five to be tried before military commissions have not.
November 14, 2009
September 11, 2009
Atta-Shukrijumah Link Another Blow to KSM’s Credibility
Today saw the eighth anniversary of 9/11 and, as usual, there were a slew of articles. The most interesting was this one on ABC, which probably requires three posts to digest fully. I have previously expressed extreme scepticism at some of the statements reportedly made by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) under waterboarding and other torture, and this report further confirms my suspicions he told his interrogators a pack of lies, which they and then the 9/11 Commission believed to an unhealthy extent.
April 23, 2009
The Usefulness of KSM’s Interrogations: Very Low
Emptywheel has a post analysing the effectiveness of detainee interrogations based on references in the 9/11 Commission report to interrogations of Abu Zubaida. She says she plans to extend this method to KSM’s interrogations cited in the commission’s report, and gives an example of one of his alleged statements as possible evidence of him giving up new information to interrogators. However, in the example she uses the US already knew most (at least) of what the commission attributes to him.
April 22, 2009
Alleged 9/11 Mastermind Travelled to South Africa in Run-up to Attacks
A newly released FBI document shows that alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, usually referred to as KSM (timeline), travelled to South Africa in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks. There he received a wire transfer from Saeed Alghamdi, one of the presumed hijackers of Flight 93 on September 11.
November 25, 2008
Almihdhar and Alhazmi Were Already Part of 9/11 Plot when They Obtained US Visas
There is a story put about by the 9/11 Commission that when 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar obtained US visas in April 1999 , they had not yet been selected for the 9/11 operation. Although this is a fourth-hand account of information allegedly tortured out of a detainee who was demonstrably lying some, if not most of the time, and is contradicted by other evidence, it has gained some currency. I was most displeased to see the claim repeated in James Bamford’s new book The Shadow Factory , which motivated me to write this up.
