GITMO Interrogators Instructed to Destroy Notes

Lieutenant Commander Bill Kuebler, who is serving as defense counsel for accused terror suspect Omar Khadr, released a statement over the weekend indicating that US interrogators had been instructed by the Department of Defense to destroy any handwritten notes that may have shown they had used harsh or illegal techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Kuebler further added that he considered the notes to be pivotal to the defense of Khadr during his impending trial for murder, to be held in front of a special tribunal at Guantanamo.^[1]

In his statement, Kuebler indicated that the Department of Defense had given interrogators instructions to destroy these notes under “SOPs,” or standard operating procedures, and that US interrogators may have “routinely destroyed evidence” relating to Khadr’s case, as well as the cases of other detainees.^[2] "If handwritten notes were destroyed in accordance with the SOP, the government intentionally deprived Omar's lawyers of key evidence with which to challenge the reliability" of any confessions made by his client or other detainees, according to Kuebler.^[3]

Defense Department directives indicate that such actions may have been taken to avoid legal issues for the US military further down the road. One portion of the directive reportedly reads "this mission has legal and political issues that may lead to interrogators being called to testify…Keeping the number of documents with interrogation information to a minimum can minimize certain legal issues."^[4]

Khadr, a 21 year-old Canadian citizen, is the son of a suspected Al-Qaeda financier. The younger Khadr is accused of being an enemy combatant in Afghanistan and was arrested in 2002, at age 15, after he was accused of having links to Al-Qaeda and killing a US soldier. He has been held at Guantanamo since that time, and now faces a military commission on charges of terrorism.^[5]

The issues surrounding military commissions and detainee interrogations have been discussed extensively in the Terrorism Crimes Blog.


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[1] Jailers at Guantanamo urged to destroy interrogation notes: lawyer, AFP, June 9, 2008 (available at www.afp.google.com).

[2] Id.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] Id.