‘Forever’ prisoner to testify at Guantanamo

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — Lawyers say the judge in the Sept. 11 war crimes case has agreed to hear testimony next week from “forever” prisoner Abu Zubaydah, the CIA’s first black-site interrogation subject.

Although captured in 2002, he has never been charged with a crime and has never been allowed to speak in public.

At issue is a claim by accused 9/11 plot deputy Ramzi bin al Shibh that someone is intentionally disrupting his sleep at the clandestine Camp 7 prison. Bin al Shibh, 44, blames the CIA or troops doing its bidding for noises and vibrations that interfere with his ability to prepare for his death penalty trial, which has no start date.

Defense lawyers say Zubaydah is being called as a trusted Camp 7 block leader to describe his interactions with and on behalf of bin al Shibh. Zubaydah, 46, whose real name is Zayn al Abideen al Hussein, was a prized early capture in the war on terror and was the first captive to be waterboarded, 83 times in a single month, among other experimental CIA “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Bin al Shibh says the CIA has been messing with his mind since his Sept. 11, 2002, capture in Pakistan, a complaint prosecutors dismiss.

But psychologist James Mitchell, an architect of the black-site interrogation program, wrote in his recent memoirs that the vibrations were real in at least one black site. “I thought about giving him a special tinfoil hat to make it all go away,” he wrote in his “Enhanced Interrogation, Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America.”

Then he and his CIA contract partner Bruce Jessen each lay down on bin al Shibh’s cell bed.

“The vibration was there, and it was not something you could ignore. It made me feel like the room was spinning,” Mitchell wrote. “I could imagine that after a while it might make a person nauseous. It would certainly keep me awake, but oddly enough, you couldn’t feel it anyplace else in the cell.”