Judge bars torture evidence

Judge bars torture evidence in ex-Guantánamo detainee trial

9 October 2010 - A federal judge in Manhattan Wednesday barred testimony from the government’s star witness in the trial of accused African embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani because the evidence was derived through torture.

Ghailani, a Tanzanian, was grabbed by the CIA in Pakistan in 2004 and disappeared for more than two years into the agency's overseas “black sites,” including one in Poland, where he was subjected to “enhance interrogation techniques,” or torture. In 2006, he was transferred to Guantánamo together with other so-called “high value detainees” from whom the agency presumably believed it had forcibly extracted all of the information possible.

The Obama administration chose Ghailani as the first ex-Guantánamo detainee to be put on trial in a normal civilian court because of what it considered overwhelming evidence guaranteeing a guilty verdict.

The trial is widely seen as the precursor to the prosecution in federal court of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of organizing the 9/11 terror attacks, who was repeatedly interrogated under torture, subjected to waterboarding 183 times. {read rest}