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U.S. using Childeren as leverage and Uses Torture March 4, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - A CIA team
will use "all appropriate measures" to convince the just-captured
mastermind of the 9/11 attacks to talk - including dangling freedom for
his two young sons, who are in U.S. custody.
Law-enforcement sources told The Post that the CIA has had the 7- and
9-year- old sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in custody since September, and
plans to use them as leverage to get the No. 3 man in al Qaeda to disclose
Osama bin Laden's whereabouts and details of future terror operations.
Mohammed, arrested Saturday in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, has undergone three
days of questioning by the same team of CIA and FBI agents who have
handled other high-profile terror war detainees. Sources said the
English-speaking Mohammed has refused to cooperate with interrogators -
and instead has spent hours in a trance-like state, chanting passages from
the Koran.
Authorities also fear Mohammed will try to kill himself, and have put him
on a 24-hour suicide watch at the military base where he's being held
overseas. But law-enforcement officials are convinced that he will
eventually talk - just as diehard al Qaeda kingpins Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi
Binalshibh did under interrogation.
The United States has made it a practice to take some high-profile terror
detainees from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Arab countries like Jordan,
Egypt and Morocco for interrogation. "We don't kick the s- - - out of
them. Some of our friends do, but we don't do that," said one former
counterterrorism official. "These guys are unbelievably cocky. They
believe God is on their side. So they believe even though they've been
captured, ultimately, they're going to prevail," he said. U.S. officials
deny torturing any captives.
In Mohammed's case, CIA agents plan to use "all appropriate means,"
including leveraging freedom for his two young boys. Those boys were taken
in the same raid last Sept. 11 in Karachi that netted Binalshibh, as well
as other members of his family in Kuwait and Pakistan, sources said.
The CIA and FBI interrogation teams will also try to get him to open up
with sleep deprivation. "You bring him in a room and start asking
questions. You keep him standing. Then you start building rewards. If you
cooperate, if you start talking to us, you get to lie down, you get to
take a nap," said former CIA counterterrorism officer Larry Johnson.
Johnson said he doubts Mohammed will be able to keep his Koran-athon going
very long under that kind of pressure.
By NILES LATHEM
and BRIAN BLOMQUIST - nypost |
