LAWYERS FOR ACCUSED 9/11 PLOTTERS SAY PUBLIC KNOWS MORE ABOUT THE MEN’S TORTURE THAN THEY DO – By Margot Williams (The Intercept) / Nov 28 2021
The sanitized summaries of CIA cables provided by the prosecution leave out vital details that journalists and others have obtained using FOIA.
DEFENSE LAWYERS FOR the men accused of planning and carrying out the September 11 attacks say that journalists and other members of the public have gotten more information about the torture their clients experienced in CIA black sites than the attorneys representing them.
The lawyers, including one representing accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, told a war court in Guantánamo Bay this month that the sanitized summaries of CIA cables provided to defense attorneys for the five alleged attackers do not contain critical details such as dates and which torture techniques were used. Meanwhile, journalists for The Intercept and other publications, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, have received fuller access to the cables by requesting them directly from the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act.
“We have a distinct difference between what’s available to the defendants in this capital case in discovery on the one hand and to the general public under FOIA in another,” David Nevin, an attorney for Mohammed, told the court. “And apparently there are situations in which security-cleared lawyers defending people in this capital case on trial for their life are entitled to less information than is available to the general public.”
The omissions – the result of a numbing bureaucratic process by which government prosecutors essentially rewrite the cables before sharing them with lawyers for the accused, leaving out material they view as overly sensitive or unimportant – are the latest sign of the government’s failures to ensure a robust defense for the men charged in the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people more than 20 years ago.
CONTINUE > https://theintercept.com/2021/11/28/9-11-trial-guantanamo-cia-cables-foia/
