Legal Commentary

Another Waterboarded Guantanamo Detainee to Face Death Penalty

By Jeralyn

Update: ACLU response is here.

The U.S. announced today it will seek to file charges that carry the death penalty against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent captured in 2002 and tranferred to Guantanamo in 2006, who has claimed he confessed because he was tortured during interrogation.

The charges are related to the 2000 USS Cole bombing.

The allegations include conspiracy to violate laws of war, murder, treachery, terrorism, destruction of property and intentionally causing serious bodily injury.

Al-Nashiri was held in an overseas secret prison before being shipped to Gitmo. [More...]

CIA Director Michael Hayden said early this year that al-Nashiri was among terrorist suspects subjected to waterboarding in 2002 and 2003 while being interrogated in secret CIA prisons.

...[Al-Nashiri] said he confessed to involvement in several other terror plots in order to get the torture to stop — including the 2002 bombing of the French oil tanker Limburg, plans to bomb American ships in the Gulf, a plan to hijack a plane and crash it into a ship and that bin Laden had a nuclear bomb.

The Defense Department's press release is here. The summary of evidence against him presented at his 2007 enemy combatant status review hearing is here. (pdf)

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 30, 2008 (boomark / email).