GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba _ An alleged accomplice in the 9/11 terrorist attacks underwent reconstructive surgery for decade-old damage from sodomy in CIA custody and was to be returned to prison to recuperate, his attorney said Saturday.
"All they said is there was minimal bleeding and he is recovering," attorney Walter Ruiz, a Navy Reserve commander, said Saturday.
His client, Mustafa al Hawsawi, 48, was scheduled to begin surgery at 9 p.m. Friday and Ruiz said he was informed that it was over by 10:45 p.m.
Hawsawi, a Saudi, and four other men are awaiting a death-penalty trial for allegedly orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and outside Washington. He voluntarily missed Friday's hearing to rest up for the procedure.
An unclassified portion of the Senate Intelligence Committee's of the CIA's Black Site program included allegations that Hawsawi was subjected to rectal exams with "excessive force" before his 2006 transfer to Guantanamo, and that at one point he had a "medical emergency" that the agency considered having treated in a foreign hospital.
Saturday, the military said nothing about the outcome of Hawsawi's Guantanamo surgery. Ruiz said he received few other details, aside from the fact that, once the anesthesia wore off, the Saudi was to be returned to Camp 7, Guantanamo's prison for former CIA Black Site captives _ including five others awaiting death-penalty trials.
The detention center spokesman, Navy Capt. John Filostrat, provided no information Saturday about the medical procedure carried out at the naval base hospital, a 5- to 10-minute drive from the Detention Center Zone.
He said by email that it was prison policy "not to discuss detainee medical issues."
Detention Center commanders have for years briefed reporters that their captives get medical care like that provided to soldiers and sailors, and that the Navy routinely brings in specialists to carry out some procedures.
Hawsawi was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003 with the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and was held by the CIA until his delivery to Guantanamo in September 2006. He is alleged to have helped the hijackers with money, Western clothing, travelers' checks and credit cards.
Hawsawi's lawyers had been litigating over conditions at the remote prison and, sought medical intervention to treat a rectal prolapse that has caused Hawsawi to bleed for more than a decade.
"Mr. Hawsawi was tortured in the black sites. He was sodomized," Ruiz said this past week, 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."
Earlier in the week, Army Lt. Gen. Jennifer Williams, one of Hawsawi's attorneys, asked the trial judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, to order the prosecution or CIA to give them the Saudi's complete medical records from more than three years in CIA custody.
