Interrogator testifies he threatened to kill son of prisoner

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — The CIA contractor who interrogated Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, testified Monday he threatened to kill one of Mohammed’s sons if there was another attack on America.

James Mitchell, a psychologist who helped develop the CIA’s interrogation program, said he made the threat after he had waterboarded Mohammed for the 183rd time. He said he did so after he consulted a lawyer about how to make the threat without violating “the Torture Convention.”

He said he was advised to make the threat conditional.

So, before telling Mohammed, “I will cut your son’s throat,” Mitchell said, he added a series of caveats. They included “if there was another catastrophic attack in the United States,” if Mohammed withheld “information that could have stopped it” and “if another American child was killed.”

Mitchell was testifying in a pretrial hearing that has focused in part on the torture of the defendants in the Sept. 11 case before they were sent to Guantánamo.

Mitchell said he made the threat in March 2003 as “an emotional flag” as he was transitioning from violent “enhanced interrogation techniques” to more traditional questioning of Mohammed.

Pakistani security forces reportedly seized Mohammed’s sons, Abed, 7, and Yusuf, 9, in September 2002 in a joint raid with U.S. forces. Mohammed was captured in Pakistan six months later.

The boys were subsequently released and are believed to be living in Iran, but Mohammed apparently did not know that until many years later, after the CIA transferred him to Guantánamo.