https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...detainee-suspected-plan-be-20th-hijacker-911/
A panel composed of the major U.S. national security agencies on Friday recommended the transfer of another detainee from the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on the condition that he be repatriated to his native Saudi Arabia for participation in an extremist rehabilitation program.
Mohammad al-Qahtani was already suffering from severe mental illness when he arrived at the notorious detention center two decades ago, his attorneys say. His interrogators then subjected him to extensive solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, violence, sexual humiliation and other abuses, according to logs of those interrogations obtained in 2005 by Time magazine.
U.S. military and intelligence officials suspected Qahtani, who developed schizophrenia after suffering a traumatic brain injury, of joining al-Qaeda and intending to become the 20th hijacker during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Qahtani, then in his 20s, attempted to enter the United States on Aug. 4, 2001, “after almost certainly having been selected by senior al-Qa’ida members to be the 20th hijacker for the 9/11 attacks,” according to government documents, but he was returned to Saudi Arabia after being questioned by Customs and Border Protection officials.
He then traveled to Afghanistan, was captured by Pakistani forces near the border in late 2001 and handed over to the Americans.
A senior Bush administration official told The Washington Post in 2009 that Qahtani had been tortured by the U.S. government, and that is why she did not recommend him for trial alongside the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other detainees facing trial in connection with the terrorist attacks.
“We tortured Qahtani,” Susan J. Crawford, the convening authority of military commissions at Guantánamo told The Post. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution….
A panel composed of the major U.S. national security agencies on Friday recommended the transfer of another detainee from the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on the condition that he be repatriated to his native Saudi Arabia for participation in an extremist rehabilitation program.
Mohammad al-Qahtani was already suffering from severe mental illness when he arrived at the notorious detention center two decades ago, his attorneys say. His interrogators then subjected him to extensive solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, violence, sexual humiliation and other abuses, according to logs of those interrogations obtained in 2005 by Time magazine.
U.S. military and intelligence officials suspected Qahtani, who developed schizophrenia after suffering a traumatic brain injury, of joining al-Qaeda and intending to become the 20th hijacker during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Qahtani, then in his 20s, attempted to enter the United States on Aug. 4, 2001, “after almost certainly having been selected by senior al-Qa’ida members to be the 20th hijacker for the 9/11 attacks,” according to government documents, but he was returned to Saudi Arabia after being questioned by Customs and Border Protection officials.
He then traveled to Afghanistan, was captured by Pakistani forces near the border in late 2001 and handed over to the Americans.
A senior Bush administration official told The Washington Post in 2009 that Qahtani had been tortured by the U.S. government, and that is why she did not recommend him for trial alongside the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other detainees facing trial in connection with the terrorist attacks.
“We tortured Qahtani,” Susan J. Crawford, the convening authority of military commissions at Guantánamo told The Post. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution….
