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Bush admits to alternative interrogation with suspect { April 17 2007 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17gitmo.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17gitmo.html
April 17, 2007
Detainee Denies Membership in Al Qaeda
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
A man who has sometimes been described by American officials as a top logistics chief for Osama bin Laden said at a closed hearing last month at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that he was not a member of Al Qaeda and differed with its approach to holy war, according to a transcript released yesterday.
The proceeding involved a review of the status of the man, Abu Zubaydah, whom President Bush mentioned in September as one of the former C.I.A. detainees with information that interrogators had wrested from him using “an alternative set of procedures,” including aggressive interview techniques.
“I disagreed with the Al Qaeda philosophy of targeting innocent civilians like those in the World Trade Center,” Mr. Zubaydah told a combatant status review tribunal impaneled to decide whether he had been properly designated an enemy combatant. The hearing before the panel of military officers was conducted on March 27 at Guantánamo Bay, where Mr. Zubaydah is held.
He said that he had been tortured in the first months of his captivity by the Central Intelligence Agency and that he made false statements during that time to stop the torture. But, in keeping with the military’s practice in releasing transcripts of the closed hearings, some of the transcript was redacted. Most details of Mr. Zubaydah’s claims of torture were not disclosed.
Law enforcement and intelligence officials have said in the past that Mr. Zubaydah was stripped, held in an icy room and subjected to loud blasts of music by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and other bands. The transcript showed that last month the president of the tribunal, an Air Force colonel, asked, “Can you describe a little bit more about what those treatments were?’
Mr. Zubaydah’s answer was not in the transcript.
Asked about Mr. Zubaydah’s assertions yesterday, Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, said: “The United States does not conduct or condone torture. The agency’s terrorist interrogation program has been implemented lawfully, with great care and close review, producing vital information that has helped disrupt plots and save lives.”
At the hearing, Mr. Zubaydah, a Palestinian, described a long history of involvement with what he called “defensive jihad.” Speaking at times in broken English, he said that because of America’s support for Israel, “I have been an enemy of yours since I was a child.”
He argued, though, that he was not an enemy combatant. “I never conducted nor financially supported, nor helped in any operation against America,” he said.
The Pentagon says Mr. Zubaydah was administrative director of the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan, forged documents and was recruited by Mr. bin Laden to be a top travel facilitator for Al Qaeda. Officials say he helped smuggle the now-dead leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, into Iraq from Afghanistan in November 2001.
As is the practice, classified evidence against Mr. Zubaydah was not disclosed. But a summary of unclassified evidence read at the hearing included the government’s accusation that Mr. Zubaydah wrote in a diary in 2002 that he would wage war against the United States. The summary also said Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian who was convicted of a plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during the 2000 millennium celebration, has said Mr. Zubaydah was the “facilitator of terrorist attack operations” and knew about Mr. Ressam’s operation.
In the transcript, Mr. Zubaydah acknowledged an active role in jihadist causes. He said he had been “a coordinator” of the Khaldan training camp, made fake passports and run guest houses “to facilitate the logistics of the brothers.” He said that his diary entries “were strictly hypothetical” and that the decision to send Mr. Ressam on the millennium mission had not been his.
In other news yesterday, lawyers for another of the current Guantánamo detainees formerly held by the C.I.A. released a statement from his father that made claims of torture.
The father, Ali Khan, of Baltimore, said that while in the earlier custody of American interrogators, his son, Majid Khan, was slapped, deprived of sleep and kept in a cell so small he could not stretch out. Spokesmen for the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. rejected those assertions.
The government says Majid Khan was selected by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of the 2001 terror attacks, to take part in a plot to bomb gas stations in the United States.
Margot Williams contributed reporting.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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