GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE (Sputnik), Joanne Stocker — Sowards, who represents purported September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, made his request to the judge during a pre-trial hearing at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday.
"The nature of the issues have to do with a very real basis for concern that we were at that time, and probably still are, subject to governmental monitoring," Sowards told Judge James Pohl. "Until we are able to perform our own due diligence and conduct the sort of investigation that professionally responsible attorneys would, we just simply cannot be comfortable" when speaking with clients.
The US government has acknowledged the eavesdropping capabilities exist, but claims it does not use them to monitor attorney-client discussions in September 11 terror attacks cases.
Sowards noted, however, that listening equipment has been installed and is maintained by J2, the intelligence branch of the US military joint task force at Guantanamo Bay.
Additionally, when a hurricane damaged the cables outside Camp Echo, the defense was instructed to move to different facilities until the equipment was repaired, Sowards added.
Attorney James Connell, who represents suspect Ammar al-Baluchi, explained that the defense has filed a separate motion seeking to establish if the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a party in the military court proceedings.
Determining whether the CIA monitored attorney-client conversations at Camp Echo would be relevant to establishing the spy agency’s role in September 11 cases, Connell said.
