An al Qaeda suspect at the Guantanamo Bay said he was tortured until he confessed to involvement in the USS Cole attack and other plans, according to a hearing transcript released yesterday.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected mastermind of the 2000 attack on the US warship, also said he told interrogators that Osama bin Laden had a nuclear bomb.
He said he made up that and other statements because he was being tortured, according to a transcript of a March 14th hearing held at Guantanamo Bay.
"From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me," Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian national of Yemeni descent, said through a translator. "I just said those things to make the people happy," he said.
"They were very happy when I told them those things."
US intelligence officials say that in addition to masterminding the Cole attack, Nashiri led the plot to smuggle missiles into Saudi Arabia for use against a US target.
The US military, during the unclassified portion of the hearing, made more narrow accusations against Nashiri. The military accused him of of financing the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 US sailors and wounded 29.
Citing statements from another suspected al Qaeda operative, the military said Nashiri bought the boat and explosives used in the attack. The United States also said Nashiri helped obtain a passport for a man involved in the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Kenya.
The military said he was holding several forged passports from several countries when he was arrested in the United Arab Emirates in October 2002. According to the redacted transcript released by the Pentagon, Nashiri denied involvement in the embassy bombing and the Cole attack.
He said he was a millionaire who had business relationships, primarily in fishing, with many people involved in terrorist activities, but that he was not himself involved in any attacks or attack planning.
Nashiri said he often met with bin Laden, who gave him more than $500,000 for his personal use, ranging from fishing projects to his marriage. "I took money from him several times. I don't know the total amount of money," he said, estimating he received about $10,000 for a project in Yemen and about $500,000 for a fishing project in Pakistan.
Nashiri also said he bought explosives for another person, but the explosives were to help build wells in Yemen. The detainee said he confessed under torture to involvement in the Cole attack as well as the 2002 attack on the French merchant vessel Limburg and plans to bomb American ships in the Gulf, among other things.
The US government deleted all parts of the transcript in which Nashiri described the alleged torture. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the torture allegations would be investigated.
Nashiri is one of the 14 detainees transferred in 2006 to Guantanamo from secret CIA prisons overseas.
Those detainees have been characterized as "high value" because their capture was believed to have a significant effect on al Qaeda operations and because they are believed capable of providing high-quality intelligence.
The hearing, known as a combatant status review tribunal, is meant to determine whether detainees should be classified as "enemy combatants." It does not determine guilt.