GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba _ A Saudi captive accused in the Sept. 11 plot returned to the war court Monday in a restraint chair, seven weeks after a surgeon fixed his torn rectum and over the objections of his lawyers, who said he was still experiencing post-operative pain.
The start of a weeklong session devoted to pretrial issues, including the health of alleged conspirator Mustafa al-Hawsawi, 48, was delayed because guards were late in bringing the Saudi to court.
Soldiers wheeled him into court in a detention center restraint chair typically used to carry out forced feedings at the prison. He was buckled in at the waist but not shackled, according to reporters who watched his arrival, stood on his own in court and sat gingerly on the defendant's chair _ after soldiers rested a large bed pillow atop it.
Al-Hawsawi is accused of helping some of the hijackers who killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, with money, Western clothing, travelers' checks and credit cards, and like the other four awaiting trial as conspirators could face military execution if convicted.
He huddled with two of his attorneys, death-penalty defender Walter Ruiz and Marine Lt. Col. Sean Gleason at the start of the hearing, sounding hoarse as he said he understood his right to waive attendance at court after Monday's session.
At issue, said Judge Col. James L. Pohl, was whether, if al-Hawsawi was in too much pain to work with his legal team and wanted to go back to his cell to recuperate, was his attendance waiver voluntary. He provisionally found him fit enough and ordered him brought to court on Monday over the objections of attorney Ruiz, who called the judge "inhumane."
A surgeon repaired a fissure in al-Hawsawi's anus at Guantanamo's base hospital on the Friday night after the October hearing _ 51 days ago, according to case prosecutor Bob Swann. "The issue is, can he sit in that seat and pay attention to what's going on?"
Al-Hawsawi's attorneys say the damage was caused during his years in CIA custody. Prosecutors in a court filing called the reconstructive surgery "elective."
Pohl ordered the surgeon who carried out the Friday night operation and the senior medical officer in charge of health care at Camp 7 to be ready to testify in court Monday afternoon. Neither has agreed to speak with al-Hawsawi's defense team about his health care, so will be questioned for the first time about it in court.
Al-Hawsawi was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003 with the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and was held by the CIA until his delivery to Guantanamo in September 2006.
He has sat gingerly on a pillow at the war court since his first appearance in 2008. But the reason was not publicly known until release of a portion of the so-called Senate Torture Report on the CIA program in December 2014, which described agents using quasi-medical techniques called "rectal rehydration" and "rectal re-feeding."
"Mr. Hawsawi was tortured in the black sites. He was sodomized," Ruiz told reporters in October, advising them to "shy away from terms like rectal penetration or rectal rehydration because the reality is it was sodomy," he said. Since then, he said, he has had "to manually reinsert parts of his anal cavity" to defecate.
"When he has a bowel movement, he has to reinsert parts of his anus back into his anal cavity," Ruiz said, which "causes him to bleed, causes him excruciating pain."
As a result, the 5-foot-5-inch man has fasted and at times withered to below the 100 pounds he weighed upon his arrival at Guantanamo from a CIA black site.
