A word that could once not be mentioned in court — torture — was front and center on Friday as a military tribunal prepares to take on the long-delayed trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed chief plotter of the 9/11 attacks, and four other defendants.
“Did it matter in your assessment that Mr. Al Hawsawi had been tortured in this many ways? Did it matter to you?” he asked. “The opinion of the Department of Justice, the attorney general, or even the president of the United States is not binding on me,” he said.This week of testimony has been devoted to a defense motion to exclude from the trial — scheduled to start in January 2021 — confessions the five defendants made to FBI agents in 2007. Among the key issues: whether the defendants had been tortured, and whether the FBI was involved in the CIA’s interrogation program.
The prosecution has said the confessions are crucial to its case; it is unclear how it would proceed without them.
That these Dr. Mengele proteges (Mitchell and Jensen) face neither professional nor legal sanction for their barbarity and monstrous cruelty put to the lie any American claim to be a 'nation of laws' or to hold any moral superiority over others. Evil