Judge Bars KSM Confession From 9/11 Trial
Judge Bars KSM Confession From 9/11 Trial
The News
A military judge has thrown out Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession in the Sept. 11 case, ruling the accused plotter's 2007 statements to FBI agents were not voluntary.
Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, the judge overseeing the Guantanamo military commission, issued the ruling Friday.
In a 45-page decision, Schrama found prosecutors failed to prove the statements were freely given, describing them as an "unbroken continuation of CIA psychological conditioning and severe coercion." He also found FBI agents intentionally withheld Miranda-style warnings from Mohammed.
Prosecutors had called the confession the government's most critical evidence in the death-penalty case against the man accused of masterminding attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Timeline
Mohammed is captured and enters CIA custody. A 2014 Senate report later found he was waterboarded more than 100 times.
FBI agents question Mohammed at Guantanamo Bay and obtain the statements at the center of Friday's ruling.
The case against Mohammed and his co-defendants enters pretrial proceedings, where it has remained ever since.
Schrama rules the 2007 statements inadmissible.
The date currently set for trial.
Reactions
The prosecution said a decision on whether to appeal will come "in the near future."
Coverage of the ruling agrees on the facts and splits on emphasis. Left-leaning outlets, including The New York Times and The Boston Globe, foreground the CIA's torture of Mohammed as the reason the statements were tainted. Right-leaning outlets, including the New York Post and the Washington Examiner, frame the decision as a major blow to federal prosecutors and a fresh risk that Mohammed dies before any conviction.
Families of the victims have long warned that the delays in the case may outlast them.
What's Next
Prosecutors must decide whether to appeal. An appeal could push the trial past the June 2028 date and add years to a case already 14 years into pretrial litigation.
Schrama has not yet ruled on the confessions of co-defendants Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. Similar exclusions there would further narrow the government's case.
More
The commission system at Guantanamo has never brought the Sept. 11 defendants to trial. The evidence fight over what the CIA did to detainees before the FBI questioned them has been the central obstacle for more than a decade, and Friday's ruling is the clearest statement yet from the bench that the two cannot be separated.
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