"KSM" and his "Judge" in farce Gitmo "trial" - Latest news & saga to date [View All]

[JackRiddler]

Why all those quotes in the headline? Read on...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/06/AR2009010603374.html

Judge's Order Could Keep Public From Hearing Details of 9/11 Trials

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 7, 2009; Page A02

The military judge overseeing proceedings against five of the men accused of planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks signed an order designed to protect classified information that is so broad it could prevent public scrutiny of the most important trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to lawyers and human rights groups.

The protective order, which was signed on Dec. 18 by Judge Stephen R. Henley, an Army colonel, not only protects documents and information that have been classified by intelligence agencies, it also presumptively classifies any information "referring" to a host of agencies, including the CIA, the FBI and the State Department. The order also allows the court in certain circumstances to classify information already in the public domain and presumptively classifies "any statements made by the accused."

Three of the accused, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed,* the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, are defending themselves and, under the order, anything they say during the course of the trial could be shielded from the public.

"These rules turn the presumption of openness on its head, making what is perhaps the most important trial in American history presumptively closed to the public and the press," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. "If these rules applied in all cases, there would be no such thing as an open trial in America."

Late Monday, the judge appeared to have second thoughts about the breadth of the order...

SNIP

* The Infamous "KSM" - A Resume:

- Pakistani born, raised in Kuwait, received his college degrees in North Carolina, supposed uncle to WTC 1993 bomber Ramzi Yussef, supposed "number three" and operations chief of "al-Qaeda" until 2003.

- Supposedly interviewed confessing his "mastermind" role in 9/11 in April, May or June 2002 by Al Jazeera reporter Yosri Fouda, who has made various conflicting claims as to how and when the interview happened. Fouda claims to have captured "KSM's" confession on a video that, however, no longer exists, except for the audio track in which, Fouda says, the voices were distorted to prevent identification.

See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=150885&mesg_id=150885

:eyes:

- Reported killed in Sept. 11, 2002 Karachi raid by Pakistani security forces.

- Reported captured in Mar. 2003 Karachi raid. (Man who looks like Ron Jeremies photographed in undershirt.)



- Reported held at undisclosed locations by CIA for several years before being brought as a "high-value prisoner" to the US torture and illegal detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

- Reported tortured by waterboarding and other means during this time.

- Supposed tapes made of said interrogations under torture later reported as destroyed by CIA.

See "Which lie should we believe? CIA admits it destroyed evidence it said didn't exist" at http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20071208163121510

- During said interrogations under torture, provided "confessions" to "masterminding" 9/11 and a long string of terror attacks, in some of which he could not have had even a peripheral role; including the beheading of Daniel Pearl -- which the family of the killed journalist hotly dispute, and for which Omar Saeed Sheikh is still on death row in Pakistan.

- Interrogations under torture of "KSM" and two other Gitmo prisoners provided most details of alleged Sept. 11th attack planning by "al Qaeda" as presented in The 9/11 Commission Report. Fully one-quarter of all report citations lead back to the testimony supposedly extracted under torture.

See http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/30/624314.aspx

"The NBC News analysis shows that more than one quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al-Qaida operatives who were subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations is central to the Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks. The analysis also shows - and agency and commission staffers concur - there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, done specifically to answer new questions from the Commission."

- The supposed "KSM" in US custody has never been presented in a legitimate court proceeding, public venue (unless you count the closed Gitmo "court,") or even photograph or video.

- Now presented in court drawings as heavily bearded, "KSM" or the actor playing him currently trying to put in a guilty plea at the ongoing unconstitutional military kangaroo tribunal for 9/11 being conducted at the US government's Gitmo torture and illegal detention center. (Sorry if the terms get unwieldy when one avoids the euphemisms.

- And so the "judge" (i.e., the military officer presiding over the farcical travesty of justice) now set to kill the release of the transcripts, even from this tightly-controlled proceeding.

- As though there would be anything to hide in there, given that agencies can present their hearsay summaries as evidence without needing to identify sources or have accusers or witnesses appear directly in the proceeding.

Remember kids, case closed!

From "Another take on the torture tapes," Dec. 12, 2007 at http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20071212110736441

Joseph Cannon in his blog of Dec. 10 recalls how past CIA claims of lost evidence later turned out to be untrue: "When the CIA tells you that a piece of evidence has been destroyed, you should react as skeptically as you would to the death of a Marvel supervillain."

One certainty is that the CIA lied, either when it told the 9/11 Commission that tapes of certain interrogations were never made, or else in its current claim that such tapes did exist but have been destroyed. This serves to underline the absurdity of accepting any CIA statements, any at all, especially about 9/11. By extension, the 9/11 Commission is yet again tainted for using the CIA's prisoner "transcripts" uncritically as a main source in its report; whether out of cynicism or unforgivable naivete is irrelevant.

It's near impossible to tell on how many levels the CIA can be (and probably is) lying about the torture tapes. They may be lying about having certain prisoners in the first place, about who they really are and what, if anything, they really did. What did these prisoners tell interrogators and was it true? When conscience or the law finally bites, can the torturer at least claim the information was good?

Were real interrogations recorded or were fake ones played for the camera? Were tapes destroyed or merely "disappeared," and either way, when and why? Cannon wonders whether the motive is to conceal the involvement of foreign agencies, like those of Israel or Saudi Arabia, in interrogations of U.S.-held prisoners. We wonder if some of the tapes will make the constructed nature of the official 9/11 fable a little too obvious. In the age of the Secret State we're all forced to play psychic: What do they want to hide?