USA-GUANTANAMO – TELAM Agency
A US military judge ruled in the last few hours that the confessions of a person suspected of being linked to an Al Qaeda attack cannot be used as evidence because they were obtained under torture at the Guantánamo base, a precedent that could affect related judicial processes. with the attack of September 11 (September 11), local media reported today.
According to the magistrate, the confession of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind behind the bombing of the US Navy destroyer USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 people in 2000, was tainted by years of violence. suffered by the suspects and inflicted by the CIA and FBI.
“The exclusion of such evidence is not without a cost to society. However, allowing (the use of) evidence obtained by or under torture by the very government that seeks to prosecute and execute defendants may have even greater costs to the society”, declared yesterday the magistrate, Colonel Lanny Acosta, who operates in the base and military prison that the United States has in Guantánamo, Cuba.
According to the magistrate, the ruling introduces “a model that others (judges) could try to reproduce,” replied the AFP news agency.
Nashiri’s lawyer, Anthony Natale, said that after his decision the judge had ruled out a key element on which the Prosecutor’s Office relied to convict his client.
The case, open for a long time and for which the defendant could face the death penalty, remains bogged down in its preliminary phase by this decision, without specifying the date on which a proper judicial process could be carried out.
Lawyers for Nashiri and five other people accused of being linked to the Al Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001, have been fighting for more than a decade before the Guantánamo tribunal so that statements obtained under torture are not Taken into account.
Nashiri, 58, is suspected of involvement in organizing the deadly attack on the USS Cole on October 12, 2000 and is also accused of being linked to the 2002 Limburg oil tanker explosion in the same region, that caused the death of a person.
Source: Ambito
