A tortured detainee's plight highlights the challenges facing the Obama administration over Guantánamo, writes Bob Woodwardin Washington
THE TOP Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantánamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the US military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the 9/11 attacks. He was interrogated with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition”.
“We tortured [Mohammed al-] Qahtani,” said Susan Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by defence secretary Robert Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.
Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the US army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defence, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantánamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.
Crawford (61) said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani’s health led to her conclusion.
“The techniques they used were all authorised, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent . . . This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive . . . It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge” to call it torture, she said.
Military prosecutors said in November that they would seek to refile charges against Qahtani (30), based on subsequent interrogations that did not employ harsh techniques. But Crawford, who dismissed war crimes charges against him in May 2008, said that she would not allow the prosecution to go forward.
Qahtani was denied entry to the US a month before the 9/11 attacks and was allegedly planning to be the plot’s 20th hijacker. He was later captured in Afghanistan and transported to Guantánamo in January 2002.
His interrogation took place over 50 days from November 2002, although he was held in isolation until April 2003.
“For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators,” said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani’s interrogation records and other military documents. “Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18- to 20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister.”
At one point he was threatened with a military working dog, according to a military report. Qahtani “was forced to wear a woman’s bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation . . . and was told that his mother and sister were whores.” With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room “and forced to perform a series of dog tricks”, the report shows.
The interrogation was so intense that Qahtani had to be hospitalised twice at Guantánamo with bradycardia, a condition in which the heart rate falls below 60 beats a minute and which can lead to heart failure and death.
The Qahtani case underscores the challenges facing the incoming Obama administration as it seeks to close Guantánamo, including the dilemmas posed by individuals considered too dangerous to release but whose legal status is uncertain.
FBI “clean teams”, which gather evidence without using information gained during controversial interrogations, have established that Qahtani intended to join the 2001 hijackers, but the young Saudi was denied entry by a suspicious immigration inspector.
“There’s no doubt in my mind he would’ve been on one of those planes had he gained access to the country in August 2001,” Crawford said of Qahtani, who remains detained at Guantánamo. “He’s a muscle hijacker . . . He’s a very dangerous man. What do you do with him now if you don’t charge him and try him? I would be hesitant to say, ‘Let him go’.”
That, she said, is a decision that president-elect Barack Obama will have to make. Obama repeated on Sunday that he intends to close the Guantánamo centre but acknowledged the challenges involved.
“I sympathise with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe,” said Crawford, a lifelong Republican.
“But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward.”
In May 2008, Crawford ordered the war-crimes charges against Qahtani dropped but did not state publicly that the harsh interrogations were the reason. “It did shock me,” Crawford said.
“If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it.”
The harsh techniques used against Qahtani, she said, were approved by then-secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld.