Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri - Interrogation

Interrogation

Abd al-Rahim attributed his confessions of involvement in the USS Cole bombing to torture. All the details Abd al-Rahim offered of his claims of torture were redacted from his transcript.

Through Freedom of Information Act requests the American Civil Liberties Union was able to acquire less redacted versions of the transcripts from Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri's Combatant Status Review Tribunal, and those of three other captives.

In his opening statement, al-Nashiri listed seven false confessions he had been coerced to make while being waterboarded.

1. The French Merchant Vessel Limburg incident.
2. The USS Cole bombing.
3. The rockets in Saudi Arabia.
4. The plan to bomb American ships in the gulf.
5. Relationship with people committing bombings in Saudi Arabia.
6. Osama Bin Laden having a nuclear bomb.
7. A plan to hijack a plane and crash it into a ship.

During the course of his tribunal he claimed additional confessions he had made, while being tortured. He was ostensibly the last of the al-Qaeda suspects to be videotaped, as he was waterboarded in Thailand by CIA officers who questioned him. Shortly after, when a prisoner died in CIA custody in Iraq, it was decided that all such interrogations would not be videotaped, as it provided criminal "evidence". All the tapes showing detainees being waterboarded were destroyed in 2005.

It was reported on August 22, 2009, that al-Nashiri was the subject of what is described as a mock execution during his torture by the CIA. A power drill and a handgun were used.

In May 2011 al-Nashiri's lawyers filed a case against Poland with the European Court of Human Rights. Al-Nashiri was held and allegedly tortured in a secret CIA "black site" prison "north of Warsaw" (OSAW) from December 2002 to June 2003.