A military judge penalized US prosecutors on Tuesday by blocking their use of a May 2003 interrogation as they finished presenting evidence in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial.
Judge Keith Allred, a Navy captain, said the government could not use the statements made by Salim Hamdan in the interrogation at Guantanamo as a penalty for not providing his defense team with potentially important documents until after the trial had started.
Allred said he would reconsider the ruling yesterday, when the defense was scheduled to begin presenting its evidence in the first US war crimes trial since World War II.
But the judge said he would only allow prosecutors to submit the interrogation if they could provide “clear and convincing evidence” the statements were not obtained through coercion.
The judge already ruled that prosecutors cannot use a series of interrogations of Hamdan at the Bagram air base and Panshir, Afghanistan, that he determined were made under coercive conditions.
He said he would use a higher standard to evaluate the May 2003 interrogation to penalize the prosecution for breaking the court-imposed deadline.
The deputy chief defense counsel for the war crimes tribunals, Michael Berrigan, said the ruling was a welcome response to government’s “inexcusable” delay in providing the defense with records that provide new details about Hamdan’s more than six years of confinement at Guantanamo.
“It’s gratifying to get this ruling, but it doesn’t go far enough,” Berrigan said.
Defense lawyers have been sifting through the prison records for material to support Hamdan’s allegations that he was subjected to abuse, including sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation and solitary confinement. Such evidence could buttress their claims that he was coerced into making incriminating statements to authorities.
The May 2003 interrogation was conducted at this US Navy base by two al-Qaeda specialists, Ali Soufan of the FBI and Robert McFadden of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and has been described in court as the most complete summary of evidence against Hamdan.
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