A suspected terrorist held at Guantanamo Bay says he confessed to planning numerous terrorist attacks only after he was tortured by his U.S. captors.
According to transcripts released Friday by the U.S. military, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri told a military tribunal earlier this month that he was tortured from the moment he was taken prisoner in 2002 in the United Arab Emirates. Nashiri said he made up several plots that never existed, including an allegation that Osama bin Laden had acquired a nuclear weapon.
Parts of the transcript where Nashiri apparently described his treatment were deleted.
U.S. authorities accuse Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent, of planning the 2000 attack on the U.S. naval warship Cole off the coast of Yemen. He is also linked to the twin bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa in 1998.
Nashiri is one of 14 so-called "high value" detainees transferred last September to the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from secret CIA prisons overseas. The detainees include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Some information for this report was provided by AP.
