New Facts About the RDI Program and the Treatment of a 9/11 Defendant

On April 11, 2025, a military judge in Guantanamo Bay issued an order granting a defendant’s motion to suppress certain statements that prosecutors had intended to introduce as evidence against him, holding that the statements were irreconcilably tainted by his earlier torture. Though the decision is not available on the Military Commissions docket, it is now publicly accessible as a result of a D.C. Circuit case in which it was filed pursuant to a 28(j) letter notifying the court of supplemental authority.

Both cases relate to Ammar al Baluchi (also known as Ali Abdul Aziz Ali). In the military commission, al Baluchi is charged in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks; in the D.C. Circuit, he is seeking a Mixed Medical Commission in support of his petition for habeas corpus.

The military judge’s April 11 ruling relates to statements al Baluchi allegedly made to FBI agents in January 2007 while detained at Guantanamo Bay. Al Baluchi moved to suppress the statements, arguing that they were obtained as a result of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and were thus inadmissible. The motion was filed more than seven years ago.

After reciting the lengthy procedural history of the motion, the April 11 ruling documents the judge’s findings of fact, first with respect to the Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) Program itself and then with respect to al Baluchi’s treatment in U.S. detention.

The judge describes the establishment and development of the RDI program, explaining key concepts such as enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), “learned helplessness,” “fear extinction,” and “operant conditioning.” He then makes findings about coordination between the FBI and the CIA, including the fact that an investigative team, which included FBI agents who later questioned al Baluchi in 2007, sent “questions to the CIA to be asked of detainees” and that the CIA “would then disseminate the detainees’ answers to the intelligence community, including the FBI.” This is relevant to the motion for suppression because prosecutors had argued that al Baluchi’s 2007 statements are admissible, both because enough time had passed since the worst of his treatment (allegedly at the hands of CIA officials) and because his statements were made to the FBI rather than the CIA.

Next, the judge described his findings of fact regarding al Baluchi’s experience in the RDI Program. It begins with al Baluchi’s capture by Pakistani authorities in 2003 and subsequent interrogation, his transfer to U.S. custody at “Location 2,” and the conditions of confinement at that location, which one senior CIA officer described as “itself an enhanced interrogation technique.” The ruling then recounts in detail the many interrogations of al Baluchi, tracking the evolution from “non-enhanced methods” to EITs, which were supervised by a chief interrogator who was “known for being willing to go well beyond what was authorized” and who was eventually removed from his position. The ruling vividly describes findings of fact regarding al Baluchi’s treatment under the EITs, which included numerous instances of “walling” for up to two hours, “water dousing” with cold or ice water, and sleep deprivation (once for around 82 hours). It notes, however, that “it is difficult to determine the full extent of what was done” during this period due to “haphazard” record-keeping.

Significantly, the judge finds—consistent with a CIA Office of the Inspector General report that is cited but not publicly available on the docket—that al Baluchi was used to train future interrogators, who demonstrated EIT techniques on him repeatedly “in order to gain their certification.” The ruling continues on to describe an “assessment period,” during which interrogators concluded that al Baluchi was “developing a sense of learned helplessness,” and a subsequent “debriefing phase,” during which “actual physical coercive tactics” were deemed no longer necessary. The judge finds that al Baluchi was interrogated approximately 135 times over the course of about five months.

The ruling then describes al Baluchi’s four subsequent renditions to and detentions at “Location 7” (approximately 8 months), “Location 5” (approximately 11 months), “Location 8” (14 months), and “Location 9” (approximately 7 months), recounting for each period findings of fact regarding the conditions of confinement, government officials’ behavior, and al Baluchi’s treatment.

In summarizing Mr. al Baluchi’s experience over these years, the military judge writes:

The Commission finds that during the time Mr. Ali [al Baluchi] was in the RDI program, he was subjected to physical coercion and abuse amounting to torture, and to conditions which constituted cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

The ruling goes on to describe al Baluchi’s transfer to Guantanamo Bay along with 14 other “HVDs”, or high-value detainees, in September 2006. It again describes the conditions of confinement, which were “markedly similar to those at previous RDI locations,” and al Baluchi’s treatment, noting that it marked the first time he was allowed to communicate with anyone who was not an agent or employee of the U.S. government for more than three and a half years.

The statements at issue in the motion for suppression were made in January 2007, several months after al Baluchi’s arrival at Guantanamo. The ruling describes in detail the circumstances and context in which those statements were made to the FBI. It then describes al Baluchi’s appearance before the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT), a proceeding in which he was given a designated representative and was allowed to make arguments on his own behalf.

Finally, the ruling applies the Military Commissions Rules of Evidence—which, among other things, prohibit statements “obtained by the use of torture, or by cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” and requires statements to be voluntary—to its findings of fact. The judge holds that al Baluchi “suffered torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment while in the RDI program.” But, the “crux of the issue,” as the judge puts it, is whether prosecutors have “proven that there has been sufficient attenuation” between al Baluchi’s 2003 statements while in the RDI program and his 2007 statements to the FBI. He holds that they did not. The ruling’s careful tracing of how al Baluchi’s experience diverged from precedential cases in which defendants’ confessions were admissible despite their earlier mistreatment includes the following comment:

It is easy to focus on the EITs because the torture of Mr. Ali [Mr. al Baluchi] is so absurdly far outside the norms of what is expected of U.S. custody preceding law enforcement questioning. However, the three and a half years of uncharged, incommunicado detention, and essentially solitary confinement—all while being continually questioned and conditioned— is just as egregious as the EITs.

The judge states that he is “not convinced” that the 2007 statements would have been obtained were it not for al Baluchi’s “prior experience being tortured, abused, and conditioned in the RDI program,” and that subsequent events were “insufficient to attenuate the lingering taint” of his treatment. He concludes that the statements were not given voluntarily and were thus inadmissible. The decision leaves prosecutors unable to use statements it previously described as “the most critical evidence in this case” in making its case against al Baluchi.

Read the opinion, and the 28(j) letter to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to which it was attached, here or below: