Judges Reject Interrogation Evidence in Gitmo Cases

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Source: ProPublica

by Chisun Lee
ProPublica



This story was co-published with The National Law Journal <1>.
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202466...

The government's case for keeping the Guantánamo Bay prisoner locked away seemed airtight. He had confessed to overseeing the distribution of supplies to al-Qaida fighters battling U.S. forces in Afghanistan, even describing the routes where pack mules hauled the packages.

But a federal judge rejected Fouad Mahmoud Al Rabiah's confessions <2>, concluding that he had concocted them under intense coercion. Even statements that the government insisted Al Rabiah had made under noncoercive, or "clean," questioning were tainted, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled, and she ordered that Al Rabiah be released.

The government has lost eight of 15 cases <3> in which Guantánamo inmates have said they or witnesses against them were forcibly interrogated, according to ProPublica's review of 31 published decisions that resolve lawsuits filed by 52 captives who said they've been wrongfully detained <4>. Because some of the judges' opinions are heavily redacted, it's impossible to be sure there aren't more cases in which the government offered interrogation evidence collected under questionable circumstances. More than 50 such lawsuits are still pending, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court gave Guantánamo inmates the green light to challenge their detention in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Judges rejected government evidence because of interrogation tactics ranging from verbal threats to physical abuse they called torture. Even in the seven cases the government won, the judges didn't endorse aggressive methods. In six, they decided the detainees' stories of abuse simply weren't credible or were irrelevant to the outcome. In one, the prisoner had repeated self-incriminating statements in military hearings, which the judge viewed as less intimidating than the interrogations he found unacceptable.

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