GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — A military judge penalized U.S. prosecutors 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 statements made by Salim Hamdan — the former driver for Osama bin Laden — in the interrogation at Guantanamo as a penalty for not providing Hamdan’s defense team with potentially important documents until after the trial had started.
Allred said he would reconsider the ruling today, when the defense is scheduled to begin presenting its evidence in the first U.S. war-crimes trial since World War II.
But the judge said he would allow prosecutors to submit the interrogation only if they could provide “clear and convincing evidence” that the statements were not obtained through coercion.
The judge already ruled that prosecutors could not use a series of interrogations of Hamdan at Bagram Air Base and in Panshir, Afghanistan, that he determined were made under coercion. He said he would use a higher standard to evaluate the May 2003 interrogation to penalize the prosecution for breaking a 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 handing over to the defense records that provide new details about Hamdan’s more than six years of confinement at Guantanamo.
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.
