Judge throws out confessions of “9/11 Mastermind” as inadmissible
Note: AI technology was used to generate this article’s audio.
A US military judge has ruled that confessions by alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to FBI agents are inadmissible at trial, dealing what was dubbed as a “major blow” to prosecutors in the long-running death-penalty case, according to US media.
On Friday, Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama determined that Mohammed’s 2007 statements at Guantánamo Bay were not made voluntarily.
“The prosecution has failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Mohammad’s statements to the F.B.I. were voluntarily given,” Schrama wrote in the conclusion of his 45-page ruling, according to lawyers who reviewed its unclassified portions, per the New York Times.
Prosecutors had already excluded statements obtained during Mohammed’s years in CIA “black sites,” where he was subjected to 183 rounds of waterboarding and other harsh techniques after his 2003 capture in Pakistan.
Schrama went further, finding the later FBI interrogations tainted as well.
He cited an “unbroken continuation of the C.I.A.’s psychological conditioning and severe coercion” at Guantánamo, along with the agents’ intentional failure to explicitly inform Mohammed of his rights to remain silent, consult a lawyer, and understand that his words could be used against him.
Prosecutors had described the 2007 FBI sessions—conducted by a so-called “clean team”—as their most crucial evidence against Mohammed, who is accused of organizing the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Defense lawyers had long argued that years of isolation, solitary confinement, and prior abuse left him conditioned to tell interrogators what they wanted to hear.
The ruling comes just days after Schrama set a trial date of June 5, 2028, for Mohammed and three co-defendants—Walid bin Attash, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali—at the military commission at Guantánamo Bay.
Chief prosecutor Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh said his team would review the decision “and will make a decision on whether to appeal in the near future.”
Under the rules, prosecutors have five days to decide, with the possibility of an extension.
An appeal could further delay proceedings that have already stretched for more than two decades.
Mohammed, a Pakistani national and former al-Qaeda operative, has been held at Guantánamo since 2006.
Families of victims have expressed frustration over the prolonged delays, fearing they may never see a full resolution of the case.
