Aus dem General:

Guantanamo judge says he’ll rule on whether 9/11 plotters were tortured

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/a-dirty-word-after-tense-exchange-guantanamo-judge-says-hell-rule-on-whether-9-11-plotters-were-tortured

The presiding judge in the Guantanamo Bay military commissions case against the alleged plotters of the 9/11 terrorist attacks said he’d have to decide whether U.S. interrogators tortured the accused men.

“I guess I’ll have to rule on that,” said Col. W. Shane Cohen, who is on the bench for the proceedings at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. The judge made the comment amid a contentious back-and-forth on Friday, as the lawyer for al Qaeda money man Mustafa al Hawsawi repeatedly called the C_A’s so-called enhanced interrogations program “torture.” The lawyer used the term while he grilled Dr. James Mitchell, the psychologist widely seen as the architect of the agency’s harsh interrogation techniques in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

“I know torture is a dirty word,” Walter Ruiz, the dark-bearded defense attorney, dressed in all black, said.

Ruiz listed allegations of what his client faced while in C_A custody, when he says interrogators bounced him off a wall, hung him from the ceiling nude, slapped him in the face, hit his head against a wall, doused him in an ice bath, and anally injured him through an unnamed means. Mitchell was not directly involved in those interrogations, and they may have been carried out under the supervision of the C_A’s former chief of interrogations, known in court only as “NX2,” but believed to be the now-deceased Charlie Wise.

“Did you have any sense of how those tortures effected Mr. Hawsawi?” Ruiz said. “Did it matter?”

…

The judge told the prosecution and defense that a ruling about torture “can be a finding of the court eventually,” though it would be “premature” to decide on it now, and “your opinion on whether it is or it isn’t has no bearing on me.”

“I know people throw around terms in the vernacular,” Cohen said, but “I’ll have to apply the legal definitions.” He referenced the U.S. criminal code prohibiting torture committed by public officials, the Fifth Amendment protecting the rights of the accused, the Eighth Amendment banning cruel and unusual punishment, and the United Nations declaration against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

“The opinion of the Department of Justice, the attorney general, or even the president of the United States is not binding on me,” the judge declared.

…

Later during the Friday hearing, Ruiz brought up the treatment of Nashiri at the hands of “NX2.” Mitchell previously had condemned that treatment.

“Was that, in your opinion, torture?” the defense lawyer asked.

Objections were raised again, and Mitchell was pulled out of the room as Ruiz said he wanted answers about the psychologist’s “brutality barometer.”

“He definitely testified that what happened to Mr. al Nashiri happened way outside the legal limits,” Cohen said. “Whether it was torture or not torture, he thought it was wrong … and he even reported it.”

The judge allowed the lawyer to ask a different question.

“The reason you don’t use the word torture is because it’s a crime, correct?” Ruiz asked.

“The reason I don’t use the word torture is because, in my training, that’s a judgment that has to be made by a judge in court,” Mitchell countered.

“Isn’t a reason you don’t use the word torture is because you feared criminal prosecution?” the lawyer asked.

Responded Mitchell: “No."