WaPo : Psychologist found accused Sept. 11 plotter to be mentally incompetent in 2009

Psychologist found accused Sept. 11 plotter to be mentally incompetent in 2009

By Adam Goldman | December 26, 2013

A psychologist who examined one of the defendants on trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in connection with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, concluded that the high-value detainee was mentally incompetent, raising questions about his fitness to stand trial, according to individuals familiar with the finding.

For three days in January 2009, Xavier Amador, a professor at Columbia University, interviewed Ramzi Binalshibh, an al-Qaeda operative and protege of alleged Sept. 11 co-conspirator Khalid Sheik Mohammed. He determined that Binalshibh didn’t understand the proceedings against him and suffered from delusions, said one of the individuals who has reviewed the case.

Amador’s assessment, which has not been known publicly until now, comes as the military commission case against Binalshibh, 41, has stalled over questions about his mental health and whether he is fit to stand trial with four other suspected al-Qaeda members, including Mohammed. He was held for years at secret CIA prisons, where he was subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” that human rights advocates have described as torture.

The psychologist’s conclusion could presage a similar finding by a medical review board that was ordered by a judge last week to evaluate Binalshibh. Such a determination could cast into doubt the prosecution of one of the key defendants in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The individuals familiar with Binalshibh’s case spoke on the condition of anonymity because details are being kept under protective order from the court at Guantanamo Bay.

Prosecutors previously told the court that Binalshibh suffered mental health problems and was taking a variety of medications for “schizophrenia and/or bipolar disorder,” but the military commission at Guantanamo Bay has never come to a determination about his fitness to stand trial.

Binalshibh is accused of playing a key role in the Sept. 11 conspiracy. According to the 9/11 Commission report, he provided assistance to the hijackers and colluded with ringleader Mohamed Atta, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Binalshibh, the report found, sought to participate in the attacks but was unable to get a U.S. visa.

Last week, a military judge ordered a medical board to evaluate Binalshibh after the detainee was repeatedly thrown out of the courtroom during proceedings because of erratic behavior.

Binalshibh has been given a diagnosis of persecutory delusional disorder, but prosecutors said in their most recent court filing that psychiatrists who examined him in the past thought he was fit to stand trial. Prosecutors did not mention Amador’s finding, but court records indicate that he spoke with Binalshibh in 2009 as part of a hearing to determine whether Binalshibh could challenge his detainment in federal court.

Binalshibh refused to cooperate with a 2008 order that he be examined by a medical board. The issue was never resolved because the case was put on hold after President Obama took office in 2009 and halted the tribunals at Guantanamo. Charges against detainees were later refiled.

The issue of Binalshibh’s fitness to stand trial resurfaced after prosecutors requested that doctors examine him. The move was unusual because it is usually defense lawyers who make such a request; in Binalshibh’s case, prosecutors probably need to address the issue to avoid the chance that a conviction could be overturned.

One of Binalshibh’s previous defense lawyers has said the Yemeni’s time in CIA custody appears to have contributed to his mental health problems. People familiar with the case say he was angered when those lawyers raised questions about his sanity, possibly explaining why his current counsel has not.

Binalshibh spent four years in CIA custody, beginning in September 2002. He languished in prolonged isolation in “black sites” in Poland, Morocco and Romania. He could be defiant and petulant, according to former CIA officials.

In the secret prisons, detainees were exposed to interrogation techniques that were “designed to psychologically ‘dislocate’ the detainee, maximizing his feeling of vulnerability and helplessness, and reduce or eliminate his will to resist,” the CIA inspector general’s report on the program said.

By the time Binalshibh landed at Guantanamo Bay in 2006, he was having problems, according to a 2009 unredacted court document obtained by The Washington Post.

A U.S. Navy psychiatrist examined him shortly after he was transferred to the prison and found he had an “Adjustment Disorder with Depressed Mood.” In a follow-up visit with Binalshibh the next month, the doctor reported that the detainee could not sleep “day or night” because of problems he suffered at another facility and that he complained about “noises, odors, and slight vibrations.”

By January 2007, his condition had worsened, and the same doctor submitted a memorandum requesting that Binalshibh be given anti-psychotic medication without his consent.

The memorandum said Binalshibh had a “history of fixed, firm, false beliefs” and “as a result of his delusional beliefs, the detainee becomes irritable, angry, and agitated episodically, which has resulted in two Forced Cell Extractions this month.”

The Navy doctor said Binalshibh had a delusional disorder for which he has “no insight,” meaning he might not have known he was mentally ill.

Binalshibh’s lawyer, James Harrington, said Amador’s 2009 opinion has no bearing on the case today because Amador never testified and his findings were never admitted into the court record.

Amador, a clinical and forensic psychologist, once examined Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in a U.S. court in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2006, he testified in the Moussaoui case that “of about 30 cases I have worked on, I find people competent in the overwhelming majority of those cases. I have only found people incompetent four times.”

Jury selection in the case of Binalshibh and the other Sept. 11 co-conspirators could begin in January 2015, but it has been delayed repeatedly in the past.

Miami Herald : 9/11 case hearing opens with closed session at Guantánamo

9/11 case hearing opens with closed session at Guantánamo

By Carol Rosenberg | crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com | December 16, 2013

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Lawyers in the Sept. 11 conspiracy trial met Monday with the judge in closed session for four hours and postponed until next year consideration of some of the hot-button issues before the Guantánamo war court in favor of a weeklong hearing tackling dry legal issues surrounding the death-penalty case.

Both the public and the five alleged 9/11 plotters will be allowed in court on Tuesday as lawyers argue a particularly military concept arguing the prosecution was the result of a “defective referral.” Defense lawyers say the Pentagon rushed the case to arraignment on May 5, 2012 before the defense teams were adequately resourced, and an attorney-client relationship was secure.

Meantime, lawyers for the men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were studying a judge’s sealed ruling that appeared to let the five defendants talk about what the CIA did to them in years of secret custody before they got to Guantánamo.

According to the ruling, said attorney James Connell, defense attorneys like himself are forbidden from divulging classified CIA information, but the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, said the Sept. 11 defendants’ “thoughts and memories” are their own.

“This ruling is an important step forward in accountability for torture,” said Connell. “The real question is whether the prison will allow the prisoners to communicate with foreign government officials, medical care providers, human rights authorities and media.”

A Pentagon spokesman had no immediate comment on whether the ruling meant, for example, that the alleged mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, would be able to describe in open court his 183 rounds of waterboarding, who he believed interrogated him or in what country — information that so far had been considered subject to censorship as state secrets.

“The government is contemplating its scope and impact,” said Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, who noted that the judge's ruling has yet to be made public.

He cautioned: “There have been cases where counsel have prematurely raced to the press with early interpretations of an order only to find out later that a given point had not been fully contemplated.”

Similarly, the military would not say if Pohl’s ruling had implications for the clandestine world of the prison where former CIA captives are kept here, Camp 7, a site so secret its location is classified. All Camp 7 prisoners’ communications are censored by the military.

Connell, the Pentagon-paid lawyer for Ammar al Baluchi, who accused of helping some of the Sept. 11 hijackers with their travel and finances, spoke after the four-hour closed hearing that excluded the public and the alleged terrorists so lawyers and Pohl could work out what part of this week’s proceedings could be held in public.

One legal motion up for consideration had been a defense request that the judge impose a protective order on any remnants of the CIA’s secret overseas prison network that President Obama ordered shut down. It was in one of those so-called “black sites” that U.S. agents waterboarded Mohammed 183 times in 2003.

Pohl also has listed for discussion a sealed prosecution motion that’s so secret it has no name on the Pentagon’s docket, which boasts “fairness, transparency, justice.” Lawyers already began arguing that secret motion in a short closed hearing this summer.

Civilian and military lawyers for the accused terrorists have been focusing on surfacing information about what the CIA did to the men after their capture in Pakistan in 2002 and 2003. They argue that because the CIA disappeared their clients, questioned them with now forbidden “enhanced interrogation techniques” and denied them access to lawyers the case should go forward as a non-capital trial.

No date has been set for the trial itself, although the chief prosecutor has proposed it start in January 2015.

Prosecutors, who don’t concede that the CIA tortured the accused before they got to Guantánamo in 2006, argue what the CIA did to them would be part of the sentencing phase that decides on whether to execute them if they are convicted.

Defense lawyers say the captives’ detour through the Bush-era Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program implicates even this pretrial phase.

Pohl, who presided at the courts martial of U.S. soldiers who abused captives at Abu Ghraib, stopped the Bush administration from razing the prison in Iraq. Defense lawyers want a similar order on what’s left of the secret CIA prison network, which reportedly included lockups in Thailand, Poland and Afghanistan.

But the White House has never declassified the Bush-era CIA program. That means, for example, that war court rules prohibit the lawyers or accused from disclosing the locations of the secret CIA interrogation sites in open court.

So, under a structure that borrows from both civilian and military practice, the lawyers and judge were to discuss how to make legal arguments that don’t divulge classified information — so that the accused as well as the public can listen in.

Connell said Monday it was unclear whether any more hearings would be closed this week, but if the judge heard arguments or a witness without the public or accused present that would happen on Friday. He did not elaborate.

At this stage, the hearings are tackling what charges, procedures and law will govern the death-penalty tribunal.

Issues include how the lawyers can communicate with the alleged terrorists who are confined to a secret prison at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba and still preserve the attorney-client privilege; whether the judge will order the U.S. government to let defense lawyers question certain witnesses; what kind of resources the defense will get and what substitutions for actual evidence the prosecutors may present at trial.

WaPo : Hamdan Seen as 'Not Fit' for Terror

Hamdan Seen as 'Not Fit' for Terror

Alleged 9/11 Architect Says bin Laden's Driver Was 'Not a Soldier'

By Jerry Markon | Washington Post Staff Writer | August 2, 2008

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Aug. 1 -- Osama bin Laden's former driver was a "primitive" chauffeur and mechanic who "was not fit to plan or execute" terrorist attacks, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks told jurors in writing Friday at the driver's military trial.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 architect, wrote that Salim Ahmed Hamdan was a low-level support staffer who never joined al-Qaeda and did not share bin Laden's ideology. Hamdan is on trial in the first U.S. military commission since World War II. His lawyers rested their case Friday, and closing arguments are scheduled for Monday.

"He did not play any role. He was not a soldier, he was a driver," Mohammed said in answers to written questions from Hamdan's lawyers that were relayed to the six military jurors. "His nature was more primitive (Bedouin) person and far from civilization. He was not fit to plan or execute."

The testimony provided another tantalizing glimpse inside the mind of Mohammed, who has been charged in the most devastating terrorist attack in U.S. history and has been a figure of intrigue since his arrest in 2003. He sketched out a vision of al-Qaeda as a group whose members also have "wives and children and schools" and said that anyone who thinks a mere driver would be involved in attacks "is a fool."

Attorneys for Hamdan, who is charged with ferrying weapons for al-Qaeda as part of a terrorism conspiracy, had wanted Mohammed to testify live in court at the U.S. detention facility here. They had told jurors there was "a significant chance" they would hear from the perpetrators of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

But Mohammed, after answering written questions, refused to meet with Hamdan's lawyers and declined to appear in court. His written remarks back up the defense's argument that Hamdan was a mere chauffeur uninvolved in terrorism. But it is uncertain if a military jury will take the word of an accused al-Qaeda leader.

The statements of Mohammed, who first appeared in court in June and railed at the military commission system that is expected to try him as well, revealed no lack of self-confidence. He called himself the "executive director of 9/11" and said he oversaw all al-Qaeda cells operating outside Afghanistan. He dismissed drivers such as Hamdan, a Yemeni father of two with a fourth-grade education, as mostly "illiterate."

His statement said Americans do not understand that al-Qaeda is a multifaceted terrorist organization that also employs a support network of professionals, such as teachers and computer engineers. "We are not gangs," he wrote.

"As the American Army (we) have drivers, cooks, crewmen and legal personal," Mohammed wrote, according to a translation from his original Arabic that was provided to the jurors. "We also, are human beings . . . we have interests in life. Our people have wives and children and schools. . . . You can not understand terrorism and Al-Qaeda from 9/11 operation."

He said al-Qaeda has been able to carry out its attacks successfully because of the group's diffuse structure and penchant for secrecy.

"One of the reasons for the success of the outside operations is the secrecy of the operations," Mohammed wrote. "So many of (bin Laden's) inner circles have no knowledge of what he was planning and so many of Al-Qaeda's members and even the trainers at the military camps do not have any knowledge of the works of the outside cells. That includes the civilian employees."

Hamdan, whom prosecution witnesses have described as personally close to bin Laden, was a mere cog in the al-Qaeda structure, the self-proclaimed terrorist leader wrote. "He was a driver and auto mechanic . . . he was not at all a military man," Mohammed said. "He is fit to change trucks' tires, change oil filters, wash and clean cars, and fasten cargo in pick up trucks."

Mohammed also attempted to shed light on what Hamdan was doing when he was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001. Prosecution witnesses testified that Hamdan had two shoulder-fired missiles in his car when he was arrested and that he told interrogators he transported weapons for al-Qaeda.

After the United States attacked Afghanistan following Sept. 11, Hamdan's job was to transport "Al-Qaeda's families" out of harm's way, Mohammed said. He would know, Mohammed added, because "I was personally responsible for transporting and getting out all families from Afghanistan to Pakistan."

A statement by another detainee also said Hamdan was not involved.