Breaking news: KSM to be tried in New York

[HannibalCards]

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/11/13/breaking-ksm-to-be-tried-in-new-york/

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and four others accused in the attacks will be put on criminal trial in New York, Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce later Friday.

The decision, described by people familiar with the matter, is part of wider announcement planned on how to bring to justice detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison. It’s the first set of decisions before a Monday deadline on how to deal with the more than 200 prisoners remaining at the facility, which President Barack Obama has ordered closed."

[rollingrock]

1. And to think

it only took the CIA 183 waterboarding sessions to get Mr. Sheikh to 'confess.' Good job!

btw, I thought OBL was supposed to be the mastermind? how many '9/11 masterminds' were there?

[KDLarsen]

2. He admitted involvement to Yosri Fouda

That was in 2002, when he was still at large. As for your mastermind gaggle, KSM had the plan and bin Laden had the money and the people.

[rollingrock]

3. If Shaikh freely admitted his involvement in 9/11 to Fouda

why did the CIA have to torture him 183 times?

uh, you really don't want to torture a suspect after he has confessed.
unless you want to risk getting your case against him thrown out of court.

[jberryhill]

5. You really don't like this news, eh?

You might want to look over Holder's statements on how this is going forward.

No confessions elicited by torture are going to be used.

[rollingrock]

9. So Holder is going to rely

on the alleged recording of the confession?

These interviews “are the first full admission by senior figures from bin Laden’s network that they carried out the September 11 attacks.” <London Times, 9/8/2002> Some, however, call Fouda’s claims into doubt. For example, the Financial Times states: “Analysts cited the crude editing of tapes and the timing of the broadcasts as reasons to be suspicious about their authenticity. Dia Rashwan, an expert on Islamist movements at the Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies in Cairo, said: ‘I have very serious doubts . It could have been a script written by the FBI.’” <Financial Times, 9/11/2002>

have these recordings been released to the public? they seem pretty dubious to me.

[jberryhill]

10. They are not going to rely on unlawfully obtained evidence

There is a difference between "evidence" and proof.

It may come as a surprise to you, but trials do not typically revolve around a single item of "smoking gun" evidence.

[rollingrock]

11. Nice strawman

I never said anything to the contrary.

[jberryhill]

14. Good

I imagine by the time all is said and done, the word "corroborate" will be a new one for you.

I'll bet you ten bucks ksm ends up convicted on admissible evidence.

[Bolo Boffin]

12. "trials do not typically revolve around a single item of "smoking gun" evidence."

Don't talk such rot. Have you never seen Perry Mason!!!

[KDLarsen]

7. Because they wanted information about AQs current operations?

Because they thought he might know about cells currently in the US?

Because they thought he might know the whereabouts of bin Laden?

Because they thought he might know x, y or z that the US intelligence would find very useful in stopping future terrorist attacks?

[noise]

8. And Agent Soufan?

Is he a liar? He stated that legal interrogation methods were working.

[KDLarsen]

16. I have no idea if he is or not

Ali Soufan hasn't been mentioned in any of the articles linked so far, so why on earth would I think he was lying?

[noise]

17. Soufan rejects the pro torture argument on two counts

rollingrock:

If Shaikh freely admitted his involvement in 9/11 to Fouda why did the CIA have to torture him 183 times?

uh, you really don't want to torture a suspect after he has confessed. unless you want to risk getting your case against him thrown out of court.

KDLarsen:

Because they thought he might know about cells currently in the US?

Because they thought he might know the whereabouts of bin Laden?

Because they thought he might know x, y or z that the US intelligence would find very useful in stopping future terrorist attacks?

Your post implies that torture was required and that torture worked as advertised. Here is Soufan's take:

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

My Tortured Decision

We actually know something about one of KSM's interrogators. He had no CT background, no Arabic language skills and no interrogation experience.

Inside a 9/11 Mastermind’s Interrogation

[KDLarsen]

18. Well..

I wasn't aware that Ali Soufan had written that opinion, so if you had linked that instead of building a strawman, it would have gone over much smoother ;)

In any case, I was posing ideas for why the CIA would have applied torture to him, even though he had already acknowledged his involvement in the 9/11 attacks. I have no idea if that was actually the case.

[rollingrock]

13. Or, more likely

they needed their patsy, and needed to get him to confess to being the 'mastermind of 9/11.'
I think 183 sessions of waterboarding would do the trick.

[KDLarsen]

15. Pst..

He claimed responsibility to Yosri Fouda in 2002 :eyes:

[Subdivisions]

4. They admitted it after they denied involvement. What better way

to claim responsibility for the most daring and complicated surprise attack in history, especially if you're being tagged for it anyway, to rally your people around you and your cause than to claim responsibility for it?

[jberryhill]

6. That's certainly a theory to try out...

But it won't hold up well if there is untainted corroborating evidence.