9/11 trial dealt blow as defendant asks for alleged CIA torture records
Source: Guardian
9/11 trial dealt blow as defendant asks for alleged CIA torture records
Ammar al-Baluchi's request for military court to review more evidence threatens to fresh delays for proceedings
Spencer Ackerman in Washington
theguardian.com, Monday 30 June 2014 21.11 EDT
The Obama administration's military trial for the accused 9/11 architects was dealt another blow on Monday when lawyers for one of the co-defendants asked the court to review evidence of his alleged torture in CIA custody.
Ammar al-Baluchi, also known as Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, requested the disclosure days after the military judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, reaffirmed his order for CIA documentation of its treatment of a different defendant in a separate war-crimes case, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
Even before the petition for CIA records, the military tribunal of al-Baluchi and his co-defendants – a death penalty case – was years away. The proceedings at Guantanamo Bay have stacks of pre-trial motions to wade through, more than two years after the commissions brought a second round of charges against the five co-defendants, replacing one abandoned in 2009 and an aborted attempt at trying them in a New York federal court.
The case, which defence lawyers doubted would reach the trial phase by 2015, could now face the additional complication of persuading the CIA to open its files to defence attorneys – not necessarily the general public – to learn some of the darkest secrets of the agency's post-9/11 detention practices.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/01/911-trial-blow-defendant-cia-torture-records
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