A army choose is weighing whether or not to renew hearings within the Sept. 11 case regardless of two potential hitches: Prosecutors are nonetheless awaiting phrase from the Biden administration on a proposed plea settlement, and a court-ordered examination is underway to find out whether or not one of many defendants, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, is sane sufficient to face prices.
Hearings within the case have been on maintain since prosecutors initiated plea talks a 12 months in the past. However in a current order, the choose, Col. Matthew N. McCall, invited prosecutors and attorneys for the 5 defendants to suggest what points is likely to be tackled in a listening to in July at Guantánamo Bay.
In April, the choose ordered the appointment of a panel of three psychological well being specialists to analyze whether or not Mr. bin al-Shibh “is affected by a psychological illness or defect that renders him mentally incompetent to face trial.” A report is due July 13.
A discovering of incompetence would disqualify Mr. bin al-Shibh from pleading responsible or being prosecuted. It might result in a courtroom inquiry to find out what psychological well being suppliers would possibly do to revive his competency, together with probably forcing him to take extra aggressive psychotropic medication.
The analysis is going on at a time of outspoken international concern over the capability of the Pentagon to offer advanced well being care on the jail in southeast Cuba. Final month, the chief of the Washington workplace of the Worldwide Crimson Cross issued a rare statement declaring that the 30 detainees’ “bodily and psychological well being wants are rising and turning into more and more difficult.”
In his order, Colonel McCall granted the medical doctors entry to details about what had occurred to Mr. bin al-Shibh throughout his 4 years of interrogations within the C.I.A.’s secret “black website” community the place prisoners have been tortured.
The whole report won’t be made public. Prosecutors might be supplied with the choice, not the underlying information. However the medical investigation could provide insights into the long-term results of the C.I.A.’s use of nudity, sleep deprivation and bodily abuse to get the prisoners to reveal Qaeda plots.
Mr. bin al-Shibh claims that he has been plagued by noises and vibrations as a part of a yearslong marketing campaign to deprive him of sleep. Court docket testimony and filings present that he typically screams within the night time, berates guards, vandalizes his cell digital camera and disrupts different prisoners’ sleep. Docs have given him antipsychotic medication, though opinions vary about his situation — from a delusional dysfunction to psychosis brought on by post-traumatic stress dysfunction, or different psychological well being maladies.
One member of the psychological well being panel is Paul Montalbano, a forensic psychologist who evaluated John W. Hinckley Jr., the person who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Mr. Hinckley was discovered not responsible by motive of madness in 1982 and confined to a psychiatric hospital in Washington for 3 many years. Dr. Montalbano assessed his suitability for launch, which occurred in phases between 2016 and 2022.
The identities of the 2 different panel members will not be identified.
The query of competency emerged behind the scenes even earlier than prosecutors entered into plea negotiations in March 2022 with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 assaults; Mr. bin al-Shibh; and the three different defendants. Prosecutors who had been attempting to carry the death-penalty case to trial since 2009 proposed the plea talks as they struggled to adjust to the choose’s orders to offer protection attorneys with extra details about the prisoners’ time with and therapy by the C.I.A.
In alternate for admitting to their roles in the hijackings, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, on the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania subject, the defendants need assurances that they’d not should serve their sentences in solitary confinement. The prisoners, that suffer a spread of situations they blame on their torture, additionally need the Pentagon to conform to arrange a civilian-run trauma care program for them.
Prosecutors have presented some of those questions to the Pentagon basic counsel as “coverage ideas,” which require the administration to take a place on whether or not they are often accommodated.
Prosecutors have requested to name witnesses throughout the subsequent listening to, together with Frank Pellegrino, a retired F.B.I. agent who took half within the interrogation of Mr. Mohammed in 2007 at Guantánamo Bay.
Protection attorneys say the interrogations at Guantánamo were tainted by the years their clients spent in C.I.A. captivity. Prosecutors argue the defendants voluntarily cooperated within the interrogations.
If the choose chooses to not maintain hearings in July, the following opening on the conflict courtroom calendar can be 4 weeks starting Sept. 18. The week of Sept. 11 has already been reserved by the choose in the usS. Cole bombing case.
