Legal Commentary

OIG Report: Interrogators Threatened to Kill Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Children

By Jeralyn

The Inspector General's 2004 Report is out and available here (pdf). Hightlights are here. (According to the AP, the correct spelling is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.)

One thing that leapt out at me was Paragraph 95 on page 43: Interrogators threatened to kill Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's children. Then there's a blacked out portion, followed by a statement that the interrogator reporting this did not believe the threat violated the law.

Do the blacked out lines refer to what they did to convince Khalid Shaikh Mohammed they could carry out the threat? In March, 2003, I wrote about the CIA's acknowledgement it had taken custody of Mohammed's sons from Pakistan to use them as leverage to get their father to talk: [More...]

The CIA has acknowledged that last September, the seven and nine year old sons of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, arrested last week and alleged to be a "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks, were seized by Pakistani authorites, and that this weekend, the kids were turned over to the CIA and then flown to America so that the young boys could be interrogated in an undisclosed location about their father's activities and used to get their father to talk.

From the Washington Times article (no longer online)

Yousef al-Khalid, 9, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, 7, were taken into custody in Pakistan in September when intelligence officers raided an apartment in Karachi where their father had been hiding. He fled just hours before the raid, but his two young sons, along with another senior al Qaeda member, were found cowering behind a clothes closet in the apartment.

The boys have been held by the Pakistani authorities, but this weekend they were flown to America, where they will be questioned about their father.

CIA interrogators confirmed last night that the boys were staying at a secret address where they were being encouraged to talk about their father's activities.... [Mohammed] has been told that his sons are being held and is being encouraged to divulge future attacks against the West and talk about the location of Osama bin Laden, officials said.

"His sons are important to him. The promise of their release and their return to Pakistan may be the psychological lever we need to break him."

My comments at the time:

First, let's translate. The operative and missing word from that last sentence is "safe." As in what Mohammed is really being told is that something awful will befall his sons if he doesn't cooperate. Legal? Probably. It's also morally bankrupt. But let's leave the father out of this for the moment. Our concern is the kids.

Isn't this kidnapping? How about a human rights violation? What kind of precedent does this set? Seven and nine years old -- has this Administration lost its mind?

We didn't realize that enemy combatant status was hereditary. A lawyer and a guardian ad litem should be appointed for these kids immediately. The kids should be returned home without delay to whatever family they have left. This is taking "sins of the father" to an unprecedented and unconscionable level.

By September, 2003, Fox News and the AP reported Mohammed was spilling his guts to interrogators. Did they show Mohammed videos of his children in U.S. custody, pleading with their father to talk and save them? I don't doubt it. How utterly bankrupt and deplorable.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on August 24, 2009 (boomark / email).