CIA gave details of 9/11 suspect's secret torture to film-makers, lawyers say

CIA gave details of 9/11 suspect's secret torture to film-makers, lawyers say
Ammar al-Baluchi’s defense team said they were stunned to see portrayal of his torture, including beatings, in Zero Dark Thirty

Julian Borger
Fri 22 Feb 2019 17.17 GMT Last modified on Fri 22 Feb 2019 19.12 GMT

The makers of the film Zero Dark Thirty were given detailed information about the torture of an inmate at a CIA “black site” that had been denied to the prisoner’s own defence counsel at his trial in Guantánamo Bay, his lawyers claim.

Members of defence team for Ammar al-Baluchi, undergoing pre-trial proceedings for his alleged role in the 9/11 attacks before a military tribunal at the US base, said they were stunned to see the portrayal of his torture, including beatings, suspension from manacles and waterboarding, in the Oscar-winning 2012 film.

The lawyers discovered that in the CIA’s year-long cooperation with the film-makers, the agency shared details of Baluchi’s torture at a secret prison, or black site, which they had been told were too secret to be divulged.

“A movie director gets greater access than a defence counsel,” Lt Colonel Sterling Thomas, managing defence counsel, said.

It is just one of the anomalies of the Guantánamo Bay military commission hearings that surface in a new Guardian documentary, The Trial.

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