Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama determined that the interrogations to which Mohammed was subjected in 2007 at Guantanamo prison were inadmissible
Los Angeles (USA).- A military judge dismissed a confession made by the alleged mastermind of the September 11 (9/11) attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to FBI agents nearly 20 years ago, ruling that they were not made voluntarily, according to U.S. media reports.
The judge in the case, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama, determined that the interrogations to which Mohammed was subjected in 2007 at the Guantanamo prison, where he is being held, were inadmissible, reported The New York Times newspaper.
Mohamed, arrested in 2003 and held in maximum-security facilities at Guantanamo since 2006, is accused of being the person who allegedly proposed the idea of the attacks to Osama bin Laden and then oversaw the operation that caused the death of nearly 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon.
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“The prosecution has failed to demonstrate, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Mr. Mohammed’s statements to the FBI were voluntary,” wrote Colonel Schrama in the conclusion of his 45-page ruling cited by the New York newspaper.
The judge cited several factors that influenced his decision, including an “uninterrupted continuation of psychological conditioning and severe coercion by the CIA” during the interrogation to which he was subjected in 2007.
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Likewise, it concluded that Mohammed was not read his so-called Miranda rights to inform him of his right to remain silent and also that he was told he could not speak to a lawyer, according to information cited by CBS.
Doubts that slow down the 9/11 process
The decision, which comes a few days before the 25th anniversary of the attacks, represents another setback for the case brought by the U.S. against Mohammed and three other defendants.
In July 2024, Mohammed and two other defendants, held at the Guantanamo base, reached an agreement with military prosecutors to plead guilty to the murder of 2,976 people in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, an agreement that was later revoked.
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The prosecution had already excluded from the case the statements obtained during interrogations, which included 183 sessions of the well-known ‘waterboarding’, according to information cited by the New York newspaper.
The lengthy procedure was suspended for several years and was reformulated under new rules in 2012, when preliminary hearings began to determine the trial date, which have been delayed by doubts regarding the admissibility of evidence obtained through alleged torture and logistical problems.
This week the judge set June 2028 as a possible date to begin the trial against the four defendants, but the U.S. government still has the possibility to appeal the recent decision, which would mean a new change in the date.
