WASHINGTON: A US military judge has ruled for the first time that an Al Qaeda bombing suspect’s confession cannot be used as evidence, because it was derived from torture, potentially setting a new hurdle for September 11 prosecutions.

The judge in the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba US military tribunals, said a confession by Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 attack against the USS Cole in Yemen that left 17 dead, was tainted by years of abuse at the hands of the CIA and FBI.

“Exclusion of such evidence is not without societal costs,” wrote the judge, Col Lanny Acosta.

“However, permitting the admission of evidence obtained by or derived from torture by the same government that seeks to prosecute and execute the accused may have even greater societal costs.”

Nashiri’s attorney Anthony Natale said the judge threw out the key evidence military prosecutors hoped to use to convict him.

The ruling left the long-running death penalty case mired in the pretrial phase, with no sign of when a full trial could begin.

Attorneys for both Nashiri and the five men accused of the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda attack on the US have battled for over a decade in the Guantanamo military court to exclude evidence against them derived from torture.

While prosecutors had argued that Nashiri was no longer affected by the impact of earlier torture sessions, the judge ruled that continued rough treatment up to that interrogation simply extended “years of physical and psychological torment”. “The evidence supports a conclusion that the accused did what he was trained to do: comply,” the ruling said.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2023