Citizens’ group seeks US accountability for CIA renditions
RALEIGH, N.C. — Efforts to prosecute the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and four co-defendants are stalled in part over a lingering issue Americans haven’t yet resolved: torture.
Interrogators at secret CIA prisons repeatedly slammed Ammar al Baluchi’s head against walls, leaving the 9-11 planner and nephew of attack mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with brain injuries and memory loss, one of Baluchi’s attorneys, Air Force Lt. Col. Sterling Thomas, said before court proceedings this week at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Thomas’ allegations are resonating with The North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture, a private, 11-member group of citizens whose mission is to highlight and denounce the practice. Just last week, the organization featured Thomas as one of its speakers at an anti-torture teach-in attended by about 100 people in Raleigh.
“The science, the facts, and the law all cut against the pro-torture argument, but they’re not being heard very well,” Thomas said. “So some of the discussion has to be taken on by those who are disturbed” by it. “Those people are often citizens who speak up.”