Despite 9/11 Accused Being Mentally “Unfit To Stand Trial,” Biden Refuses Plea Deal That Would Provide Mental Health Care, As Required By International Law

Ramzi bin al-Shibh, in a recent photo taken at Guantánamo by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and his trial judge, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, who has recently accepted an assessment by a DoD Sanity Board that he is unfit to stand trial because he suffers from PTSD and psychosis.

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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

In startling news from Guantánamo four days ago, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, the judge in the military commission case against the five men accused of involvement in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, ruled that one of the men, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, is, as the Associated Press described it, “unfit for trial” after a medical panel found that “torture left him psychotic” — or “lastingly psychotic,” as the article’s opening line stated.

Bin al-Shibh, 51, a Yemeni, was 30 years old when he was seized in a house raid in Karachi, Pakistan on September 11, 2002, the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. He was subsequently held for four years in CIA “black sites” around the world — including Morocco, Poland, Romania and a “black site” that existed in Guantánamo in 2003-04 — before his final transfer to Guantánamo in September 2006, with 13 other “high-value detainees,” including the other four men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

After an abortive attempt, in 2008, to prosecute the five men in the military commissions under President Bush, and a subsequent commitment, in November 2009, to prosecute them in a federal court in New York, which was abandoned after a Republican backlash, the five were charged in a revived military commission system in May 2011.

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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