Friday, March 16, 2007

De-Redacted Transcripts

I read through the redacted transcript of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing pretty closely when it was released two days ago, to write up this post, as well as this one. So I was surprised to read on ABC's The Blotter yesterday that he had confessed to beheading reporter Daniel Pearl:

"I decapitated with blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed said in a written declaration submitted to a military tribunal at Guantanamo last weekend.

Because in the version I'd read, while he'd mentioned Pearl in his rambling closing remarks, he had by no means taken responsibility for his murder. For a moment I wondered whether my memory was serving correctly, or if I could have possibly read past a quote like that. Until I found this in the NY Times article on his hearing:

Though Mr. Mohammed referred to Mr. Pearl in passing in the transcript, he did not confess to the killing.

The mystery was cleared up when I went to double check the transcript and found this notation next to the link: New - Transcript of CSRT (KSM) Hearing (Revised as of 3/15/2007). And sure enough, when I clicked through, the written statement Muhammad filed with the tribunal now read as quoted in The Blotter above.

Noah Shachtman's got a lengthy rundown of some of the debate surrounding the credibility of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's confession over on his Danger Room blog. After all, it's to be expected that an international terrorist might engage in misinformation, both to cover the tracks of the guilty parties, but also to inflate the impact of his image.

But when a heavily redacted transcript of a quasi-legal proceeding is later revised, it raises the question of potential abuse of the proceedings for purposes of misinformation by the US government. Which is the very reason that most critics of the tribunals have argued for more transparent proceedings based on the legal principles of the American judicial tradition.

I emphasize that I am not advancing a moral equivalency argument. There's no comparison between Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and the US government. It's apples and oranges.

But this is Public Relations 101. To try these guys in a Court of Star Chamber only provides propaganda fodder for our enemies by creating martyred heroes, and emboldens them as much if not more than domestic opposition to the Iraq War might. That we're repeating the same mistake mere months after the Saddam Hussein execution debacle is inexcusable.

Update: According to the NY Times, the military blamed the original redaction of the Pearl confession on the need to notify the family. I'm skeptical, if only for the fact that the hearing took place on Saturday, March 10th while the the original transcript wasn't released until Wednesday, March 14th.

Posted by Judah in:  Global War On Terror   Human Rights   

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