Gitmo prosecutor agrees with CIA report
He says Senate’s finding of widespread torture is accurate
The chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has stipulated in a filing yet to be made public that the executive summary of a scathing Senate report on the CIA’s former interrogation program is accurate.
The report, based on a years-long Senate investigation, described brutal treatment of prisoners held at CIA “black sites” around the world, including high-value detainees such as self-declared 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Three CI A pr isoners, including Mohammed, were waterboarded in what agency medical personnel described as “a series of near drownings,” according to the Senate report. Detainees also were beaten, forced into confinement boxes, deprived of sleep for long stretches and subjected to rectal rehydration. Unapproved techniques included mock executions, and one detainee died after being left in the freezing cold at a facility in Afghanistan.
The prosecutor’s statement puts him at odds with CIA Director John Brennan, former senior agency officials and congressional Republicans who have said the Senate Intelligence Committee document, released in December 2014, is strewn with errors and flawed in its conclusions.
Brig. Gen. Mark Martins made his declaration in a lengthy motion filed Friday in the milita r y commission case against five suspects accused of carrying out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including Mohammed.
The declaration, a portion of which was seen by The Washington Post, states, “While the opinions and conclusions of the [Senate report] are irrelevant to these proceedings, the factual recitations of what occurred to the accused are gleaned from the very same Executive Branch documents the Prosecution has reviewed, or is in the process of reviewing, in its own holdings.”
“As such, the Prosecution will stipulate that the facts contained within the Executive Summary occurred,” Martins stated.
The 528-page summary released to the public is drawn from a classified study that exceeds 6,000 pages.
Defense lawyers want access to all documents about the treatment of their clients and ultimately plan to use the issue of torture as a mitigating factor to argue against the death penalty if the defendants are found guilty.
Martins’ stipulation appears to be an effort to limit the amount of classified material that will be used in the trial and speed up proceedings. By acknowledging that the defendants were treated as described in the report, he hopes to avoid a protracted discovery process in a case that is already taking many years to prosecute.
He wrote in the filing that the executive summary “contains a wealth of information for the defense to use in its preparation.”
Mart ins, through a spokesman for the military commissions, declined to comment.
Mohammed and the other defendants were taken to Guantanamo Bay in 2006 after being held at secret CIA prisons. They were first charged in 2008 under the George W. Bush administration. Those proceedings were suspended by the Obama administration, which had hoped to put the men on trial in federal court. When that effort failed because of congressional and local opposition, military charges were reinstated in 2011.
James Connell, the civilian attorney for 9/11 defendant Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, said defense lawyers will continue to fight to see the entire Senate report as well as any other relevant documents. “The government is taking a bare-bones approach to discovery, trying to provide as little information as possible about CIA torture,” he said.