(RepublicanDaily.org) – Enhanced interrogation techniques have been the source of fierce controversy for many years now. Advocates say they help avoid terror attacks. Detractors point to legal and human rights concerns and the questionable reliability of evidence gathered using these techniques. CIA torture allegations continue to complicate the case against the terrorists who allegedly planned 9/11.
Nearly 20 years since the worst terrorist attacks in American history, the suspects accused of planning them still have not stood trial. Part of the reason for this is controversy around the techniques CIA and FBI operatives used to extract information from them during their detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The legal teams defending five of these individuals seek to strike out confessions they made under duress while in custody at the island prison facility. These confessions include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who experts believe was the mastermind.
The key questions of whether confessions obtained by the FBI following their CIA custody should be admissible, and whether the United States was truly at war with al Qaeda prior to 9/11, remain unresolved.https://t.co/3GhXM7mJec
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) September 7, 2021
The techniques agents reportedly used were waterboarding, slaps to the face, stress positions, and sleep deprivation.
Mohammed and his four alleged accomplices are scheduled to stand trial in death penalty cases. The admissibility (or inadmissibility) of this confession evidence will be crucial in the proceedings. On September 7, there was a pretrial motion for the first time in more than a year for the case. The actual trial could start in April 2022, but the judge hasn’t set that date yet.
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