9/11 Interrogation Tapes Found Under Desk. Tapes 'extremely relevant' as CIA said "recordings didn't exist."



Confessed "9/11 architect" Ramzi Binalshibh is being held pending trial at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The CIA has tapes of [alleged] 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret overseas prison. Discovered under a desk, the recordings could provide an unparalleled look at how foreign governments aided the U.S. in holding and questioning suspected terrorists.

CIA officials believed they had wiped away all of the agency's interrogation footage. But in 2007, a staff member discovered a box tucked under a desk in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and pulled out the Binalshibh tapes.

A Justice Department prosecutor ... is now ... probing why the Binalshibh tapes were never disclosed. Twice, the government told a federal judge they did not exist.

The tapes could complicate U.S. efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, 38. If the tapes surfaced at trial, they could clearly reveal Morocco's role in the counterterrorism program known as Greystone, which authorized the CIA to hold terrorists in secret prisons and shuttle them to other countries.

More significantly to his defense, the tapes also could provide evidence of Binalshibh's mental state within the first months of his capture. In court documents, defense lawyers have been asking for medical records to see whether Binalshibh's years in CIA custody made him mentally unstable. He is being treated for schizophrenia with a potent cocktail of anti-psychotic medications.

August 17, 2010, MSNBC Original article here.

Above text from: wanttoknow.info

No comments:

Post a Comment