Destroyed torture tapes affect Padilla, Moussaoui cases, and 9-11 Commission report

[seafan]

The CIA is in deep legal jeopardy.

Not only has the CIA committed illegal acts on John Yoo's (et. al.) sycophantic premise of rewriting the laws to protect this administration, the CIA has destroyed this videotape evidence of illegal torture that defense attorneys in at least two court cases had requested to help in the defense of their clients.

In addition, this videotape evidence was secreted from the 9-11 Commission in its deliberations.


CBS

December 8, 2007

.....

Convicted terror conspirator Jose Padilla's lawyers claimed in a Florida federal court that Abu Zubaydah was tortured into saying Padilla was an al Qaeda associate. The Justice Department dismissed Padilla's allegations as "meritless," saying Padilla's legal team could not prove that Abu Zubaydah had been tortured.

Padilla and his two co-defendants will be sentenced next month. They face life in prison on three terror-related convictions.

Then-U.S. District Judge Mukasey, now attorney general, signed the warrant used by the FBI to arrest Padilla in May 2002. That warrant relied in part on information obtained from Abu Zubaydah, court records show.

In a separate case, attorneys for al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in 2003 began seeking videotapes of interrogations they believed might help their client. In November 2005 a federal judge ordered the government to disclose whether it had video or audio tapes of specific interrogations. Eleven days later, the government denied it had them.

Gerald Zerkin, one of Moussaoui's lawyers in the penalty phase of his trial, recalled some of the defense efforts to obtain testimony from or video or audio tapes of the interrogations of top al Qaeda detainees. "Obviously the important witnesses included Zubaydah, Binalshibh and KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed). ... Those are the guys at the head of the witness list," Zerkin said. He could not recall specifically which tapes he requested or the phrasing of his discovery requests, which he said were probably still classified.

The tapes also were not provided to the special commission that studied government actions before and after the 2001 attacks. The commission relied heavily on intelligence reports about Abu Zubaydah and Binalshibh's 2002 interrogations.

.....

AG Mukasey, as he is deeply involved in this, should recuse himself from all aspects of this investigation. We need a special prosecutor to take over.


Again, very cynically, to Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer, we are paying a tremendous price for your foolishness.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. The defense teams for both defendants should make motions for a mistrial

based on prosecutorial misconduct and lack of evidence, if not downright dismissal of charges altogether.

[pberq]

2. Legal jeopardy - precisely!

But since when has legal jeopardy meant anything with the current administration?

And, as you point out, some Democrats are complicit.

[ray of light]

3. ok..so who DIRECTED their actions? And given the # of coverups is it

feasible that B/C were NOT involved? I suspect that an investigation would prove that Bush and Cheney knew and directed the actions.

[spanone]

4. obstruction of justice...destroying evidence

[tanyev]

5. It Was NOT The Fact That He Was Tortured That Needed Covering Up-IT WAS WHAT HE SAID!

It's Not Torture They're Covering Up, It's the Results
by The Baculum King
Fri Dec 07, 2007 at 03:41:17 PM PST

The automatic assumption about the CIA's destruction of the interrogation tapes of Abu Zubaydah is that the tapes exposed methods everyone would agree amounted to torture, and they were destroyed to prevent that proof being exposed. It's quite likely that what was being covered up was the results of that torture.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2428031

[bonito]

6. K&R

[Octafish]

7. Bush Crime Family destroyed a man's mind for their empire.

They also killed a million people who had NOTHING to do with 911.

C'mon America! Put down the remote! Show some outrage!

[L. Coyote]

8. If evidence is destroyed, the presumption thereafter favors defendants/litigants the evidence

might exonerate/benefit, not? How many reprecusions will there be, legally?

[killbotfactory]

9. the CIA also commits terrorism.

What do you expect from those jackals?