A Saudi national facing a war crimes tribunal at Guantanamo
Bay for allegedly aiding the 9/11 attack told interrogators that he
bought plane tickets and facilitated money transfers for seven of the
hijackers, a retired FBI agent claimed on Wednesday.
It
is said to be the most detailed account so far of evidence prosecutors
intend to use in a case that has unfolded incrementally over nearly six
years.
Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi spoke to interrogators
over four days in January 2004 as they showed him financial and travel
records collected in the investigation into the attacks, admitting
without remorse that he helped carry out the Al Qaida plot even if he
didn't know exactly what was planned beforehand, the retired agent,
Abigail Perkins, told the court at the US base in Cuba.
“He
indicated that he was a link in the chain, and oftentimes at the end of
the chain would be an operation or an attack,” said Perkins, who left
the FBI after 22 years with the law enforcement agency and now works for
the US Department of Energy.
Al-Hawsawi, who was living
in the United Arab Emirates in the months before the attack on Sept 11,
2001, provided travel and financial assistance to at least seven of the
19 hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a
field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Perkins said.
The
defendant told interrogators that he considered it a legitimate strike
aimed at punishing the United States for keeping troops in Saudi Arabia,
backing regimes that Al Qaida opposed and supporting Israel in its
conflict with the Palestinians, Perkins added.
“He indicated that he was very happy to have been able to support the brothers who carried out the attack,” she said.
Her
testimony came during the 26th pretrial hearing at the base in the case
of five men held at Guantanamo for their alleged roles in the attack.
They face trial by military commission on charges that include nearly
3,000 counts of murder in violation of the law of war, terrorism, and
hijacking and could get the death penalty if convicted.
The case has been bogged down in pretrial litigation since their May 2012 arraignment.
Prosecutors
called the retired FBI agent to establish that al-Hawsawi meets the
legal definition of “alien unprivileged enemy belligerent” and can be
prosecuted by a military commission under the law that set up the
tribunal in 2009.
In doing so, they provided a window
into some of the evidence they would likely present at the actual trial,
which has not yet been scheduled.
Lawyers for the
49-year-old al-Hawsawi have argued that he was, at most, a minor figure
in the plot and that his case should be severed from the other four
defendants or the charges dismissed outright. They also say any
statements he made to Perkins were tainted by brutal treatment in CIA
custody between his capture in Pakistan in March 2003 and when he was
taken to Guantanamo in September 2006.
Perkins told the
judge that she and the other agents who questioned al-Hawsawi gave him a
modified advisory of his rights that did not include the right to have
an attorney present, which was not required by Department of Defence
rules under which they were operating.
They had reviewed
the information provided by the CIA but were trying to obtain untainted
statements that could be used to prosecute him by military commission,
she said.
Defence attorneys were expected to
cross-examine Perkins and another agent who took part in the
interrogation when the hearing resumes on Thursday.
