[Pen-l] torture admitted by Bush admin official

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

from SLATE:
>The Washington Post leads with the Bush administration official in charge of deciding which detainees at Guantanamo Bay will go to trial declaring that the U.S. military tortured Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who allegedly intended to be a part of the Sept. 11 attacks. "We tortured Qahtani," Susan Crawford, the convening authority of military commissions, said. Crawford has now become "the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured," declares the WP's Bob Woodward. ...

>In her first interview since becoming the point person in the military commissions, Crawford stated that she refused to allow Qahtani to be prosecuted because the treatment he received while in custody "met the legal definition of torture." Crawford was careful to emphasize that all the interrogation techniques used with Qahtani were authorized at the time, but it was the way the different methods were combined, as well as their duration, that had an adverse impact on the detainee's health. "It was abusive and uncalled for," she said. "And coercive. Clearly coercive."

>Although military prosecutors have said they would refile charges against the alleged 20th hijacker based on information gleaned from later interrogations that didn't use harsh techniques, Crawford emphasized that she wouldn't allow it to move forward. Crawford recognized that her unwillingness to let the prosecution go forward means that Obama faces a tough choice. "He's a very dangerous man," she said. "I would be hesitant to say, 'Let him go.' " [syntax problem! is it Obama who's dangerous?]

>In a related story, the WP goes inside with a former Guantanamo prosecutor saying in a declaration filed in federal court that the evidence against detainees at the prison in Cuba is such a mess that it is impossible to carry out a proper prosecution. Darrel Vandeveld was the lead prosecutor against an Afghan who has been held in Guantanamo for six years but left his post last year due to what he described as a crisis of conscience. Vandeveld affirms that most of the important evidence was missing or suffered from a "complete lack of organization." The chief military prosecutor isn't buying it and says Vandeveld is just bitter because he wasn't chosen to be a team leader.<
-- 
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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