GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Prosecutors volunteered on Friday to evaluate lots of, maybe hundreds, of pages of labeled C.I.A. paperwork within the Sept. 11 case to find out if some materials offered to protection attorneys was too closely redacted.
The acknowledgment that some secrets and techniques on the Guantánamo court docket could now not be secret got here on the fourth day of a listening to within the complicated conspiracy case towards Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and 4 different males who’re accused of plotting the hijackings that killed almost 3,000 folks on Sept. 11, 2001. The capital case has been in pretrial hearings since 2012, one purpose info as soon as thought-about nationwide safety secrets and techniques could now be made public.
In a presentation, James G. Connell III, a protection lawyer for Mr. Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi, informed the court docket that he had up to now obtained 1,025 pages of as soon as labeled cables and different paperwork from the C.I.A. by means of the Freedom of Info Act, which included extra particulars than prosecutors and the decide had accredited to be used on the eventual death-penalty trial. The company is getting ready to launch one other 2,100 pages of secret paperwork, Mr. Connell stated.
Mr. Connell supplied for example a Might 3, 2003, report from a C.I.A. black web site jail on an interrogation of Mr. Baluchi, in all probability in Pakistan, that the company launched by means of the Freedom of Info Act.
The prosecution model, invoking a nationwide safety privilege, coated up the day of the month as a part of a routine apply by prosecutors of blurring dates of C.I.A. studies from the black websites; omitted the title “Ammar al Baluchi Interview” and sure monitoring info; and redacted components of sentences displaying the supply of sure info was Majid Khan, one other black web site prisoner, who not too long ago stated in court docket that he made up lies whereas being tortured to fulfill his interrogators.
A lead prosecutor, Clayton G. Trivett Jr., agreed to the evaluate, saying that “there may be some reconciliation that must be accomplished” by his group. He stated prosecutors would examine paperwork launched by the C.I.A. below FOIA to these his group had ready and given to protection attorneys.
Mr. Trivett stated that if the C.I.A. has subsequently modified its theories or guidelines of classification, “it can’t be” that “the general public” has entry to extra full paperwork than protection attorneys and, probably, finally a jury get.
Mr. Mohammed and the opposite defendants had been captured in Pakistan in 2002 and 2003. The case is mired in hearings on whether or not admissions they made to F.B.I. brokers after their arrival in Guantánamo in 2007 had been tainted by their torture.
The brand new decide, Col. Matthew N. McCall of the Air Pressure, is listening to dozens of pleadings by protection attorneys who need the court docket to order the federal government to seek for and switch over info they argue could also be lacking from the primary six or seven years of the accused plotters’ detention.
It was unclear how a lot time the prosecution’s evaluate would take, or whether or not it might additional set again efforts by prosecutors to deliver the case to trial. Mr. Trivett additionally didn’t seem to decide to evaluate all of the labeled paperwork within the case.
However the growth underscored how the panorama of public info has modified within the almost 10 years that the case has been in pretrial proceedings, notably by means of litigation in different courts and thru authorities leaks.
Simply final month, when the Supreme Court docket wrestled with nationwide safety invocations in a civil case involving claims of torture of a Guantánamo prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, at an abroad C.I.A. jail, a number of justices overtly named the nation in query as Poland.
“The truth that he was tortured by these contractors in Poland, that’s not a state secret?” Justice Amy Coney Barrett requested in a query that, below present guidelines on the court docket at Guantánamo Bay, would have constituted a spill of labeled info.
To stop such info from reaching the general public from the Guantánamo proceedings, the Pentagon court docket has a 40-second delay on audio broadcast into the spectator’s gallery, time for a safety officer contained in the court docket to mute what the general public hears.
Prosecutors have persistently invoked the nationwide safety privilege for the names of each nation that hosted a black web site within the C.I.A. program, which was established in 2002 and was closed in 2009, as a result of the nations that permitted the US to run the key prisons had been promised anonymity. Allowing the positioning to be talked about, the reason goes, would hurt overseas relations.
Two years in the past, prosecutors had been pressured to revisit their classification selections in Guantánamo’s different death-penalty case after the Military decide there dominated that their deletions “might pretty be characterised as self-serving and calculated to keep away from embarrassment,” and “indicative of a minimalist view” of proof protection attorneys had been entitled to obtain.
Mr. Trivett, a lead prosecutor within the Sept. 11 case, dedicated his group to conducting the evaluate quickly after Mr. Connell’s presentation, fairly than anticipate the decide’s ruling on the query.