A military judge on Friday tossed out a confession that alleged Sept. 11 attacks mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed delivered to FBI agents almost 20 years ago, CBS News has learned, finding it was not given voluntarily.
The ruling marks a blow to the federal government’s long-delayed effort to prosecute Mohammed, who is accused of developing the plot to crash planes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center. He is being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, along with several other defendants who are awaiting trial.
The judge in the case, Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, scheduled a trial for Mohammed and three other men for June 2028 earlier this week.
In Friday’s court order, which has not been publicly released, Schrama suppressed the statements that Mohammed made to the FBI when he was interrogated over the course of four days in Guantanamo Bay in January 2007.
Years earlier, Mohammed was captured and held by the CIA, which subjected him to waterboarding and other tactics that are widely viewed as torture during interrogation sessions — leading Mohammed’s later statements to a separate FBI team to be challenged by attorneys.
Schrama found that the CIA’s handling of Mohammed had instilled in him a fear that he would be severely mistreated if he failed to comply with his interrogators. He also found that Mohammed was not given a Miranda warning informing him of the right to remain silent, and was told he could not speak to a lawyer.
The prosecutor in Mohammed’s case, Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh, told The New York Times the government would “make a decision on whether to appeal in the near future.”