Exclusive: '20th Hijacker' Claims That Torture Made Him Lie - Friday, Mar. 03, 2006

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1169322,00.html

Of the roughly 500 detainees held at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, none is more notorious than Mohammad al-Qahtani, the so-called "20th hijacker." Only weeks before 9/11, he tried to enter the U.S. illegally in Orlando, Fla., while the plot's leader, Mohammad Atta, waited to pick him up in the airport parking lot. As the Pentagon has said, "Had al-Qahtani succeeded in entering the U.S., it is believed he would have been on United Airlines Flight 93, the only hijacked aircraft that had four hijackers instead of five {and the one that ended up crashing in a Pennsylvania field instead of striking the White House, its widely believed intended target}."

Last June, TIME published excerpts from a highly classified, 84-page log minutely detailing al-Qahtani's interrogation at Guantanamo. Now, as an increasing number of detainees mount legal challenges to their incarceration, TIME is making the record of al-Qahtani's treatment available to the public in its entirety (except for some names which have been redacted) for the first time. Back in June 2005, the Pentagon insisted that al-Qahtani had provided vital intelligence, focusing on key al-Qaeda leaders and some 30 fellow prisoners at Guantanamo whom he identified as Osama bin Laden's bodyguards.

Now, in an eyewitness account of al-Qahtani at Guantanamo, his recently appointed American lawyer tells TIME that al-Qahtani has repudiated all of his previous statements — claiming they were extracted under brutal torture. And that repudiation is sure to fuel the growing number of challenges in American courts from the detainees at Guantanamo whom al-Qahtani fingered.

has been demoted to 21st.

There's more to come, too. We're sure to see that there was a concerted effort at the CIA and DOd to feed the cheney machine the horseshit it wanted. The Plame case all but documented how this regime...specifically cheney & rummy were hellbent on getting the intel that fit their agenda and then use the "law" and their power to push it forward. We're just starting to get the evidence of how far they went in doing this.

The Gitmo situation was bad enough, but I can't even imagine what torture went on at the black sites.

Not another topic about Rush Limbaugh!

Thank you for posting it.

legitimate prosecutions.

Fucking idiots.