http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1169322,00.htmlOf the roughly 500 detainees held at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, none is more notorious than Mohammad al-Qahtani, the so-called "20th hijacker." Only weeks before 9/11, he tried to enter the U.S. illegally in Orlando, Fla., while the plot's leader, Mohammad Atta, waited to pick him up in the airport parking lot. As the Pentagon has said, "Had al-Qahtani succeeded in entering the U.S., it is believed he would have been on United Airlines Flight 93, the only hijacked aircraft that had four hijackers instead of five {and the one that ended up crashing in a Pennsylvania field instead of striking the White House, its widely believed intended target}."
Last June, TIME published excerpts from a highly classified, 84-page log minutely detailing al-Qahtani's interrogation at Guantanamo. Now, as an increasing number of detainees mount legal challenges to their incarceration, TIME is making the record of al-Qahtani's treatment available to the public in its entirety (except for some names which have been redacted) for the first time. Back in June 2005, the Pentagon insisted that al-Qahtani had provided vital intelligence, focusing on key al-Qaeda leaders and some 30 fellow prisoners at Guantanamo whom he identified as Osama bin Laden's bodyguards.
Now, in an eyewitness account of al-Qahtani at Guantanamo, his recently appointed American lawyer tells TIME that al-Qahtani has repudiated all of his previous statements — claiming they were extracted under brutal torture. And that repudiation is sure to fuel the growing number of challenges in American courts from the detainees at Guantanamo whom al-Qahtani fingered.