The CIA has videotapes, after all, of interrogations in a secret overseas prison of admitted Sept. 11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh.
Discovered in a box under a desk at the CIA, the tapes could reveal how foreign governments aided the US in holding and interrogating suspects and could complicate US efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, who has been described as one of the “key plot facilitators” in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Apparently the tapes do not show harsh treatment — unlike videos the agency destroyed of the questioning of other suspected terrorists.
The two videotapes and one audiotape are believed to be the only existing recordings made within the clandestine prison system and could offer a revealing glimpse into a four-year global odyssey that ranged from Pakistan to Romania to Guantanamo Bay.
The tapes depict Binalshibh’s interrogation sessions in 2002 at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat, several current and former US officials said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the videos remain a closely guarded secret.
When the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two other al-Qaeda operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being waterboarded in 2005, officials believed they had wiped away all of the agency’s interrogation footage. However, in 2007, a staff member discovered a box tucked under a desk in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and pulled out the Binalshibh tapes.
If the tapes surfaced at Binalshibh’s trial, they could highlight Morocco’s role in a counterterrorism program which authorized the CIA to hold terrorists in secret prisons and shuttle them to other countries.
The tapes also could provide evidence of Binalshibh’s mental state within the first months of his capture. In court documents, defense lawyers have been asking for medical records to see whether his years in CIA custody made him mentally unstable. He is being treated for schizophrenia.
Binalshibh has never had a hearing on whether he is mentally fit to stand trial.
A Justice Department prosecutor who is already investigating whether destroying the Zubaydah and al-Nashiri tapes was illegal is now also looking into why the Binalshibh tapes were not disclosed.
The CIA first publicly hinted at the existence of the tapes in 2007 in a letter to US District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia.
The government twice denied having such tapes, recanting once they were discovered but the government blacked out Binalshibh’s name from a public copy of the letter.
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