A military judge has rejected a U.S. government request to restart proceedings against a man in the Sept. 11 case who has been found mentally unfit to stand trial.
The man, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, has believed for years that the C.I.A. is constantly, physically harassing him in his cell at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to his lawyers, and has post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in isolation and interrogation by the agency, 2002 to 2006.
The judge disclosed the decision on Tuesday, a day after prosecutors asked another court to set an aspirational trial start date of Jan. 11, 2027, coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Guantánamo prison.
Taken together, the two filings show that prosecutors hope to wrap up a series of higher-court appeals while they pursue up to 16 weeks of pretrial hearings at Guantánamo this year to sort out which trial evidence is tainted by torture and other crucial issues.
Four other men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of hatching the plot, are charged with conspiring in the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people. They have been in U.S. custody since 2003 and were charged in this case in 2012.
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In the case of Mr. bin al-Shibh, Col. Thomas P. Hynes, an Army judge, found that a senior Pentagon official- did not have a valid reason to seek resumption of the case against him, according to a short order by the judge.
A more detailed decision was under seal at the court.
Defense lawyers say Mr. bin al-Shibh believes he is being bombarded with prickly vibrations and other sonic rays, particularly to his genitals, leaving him exhausted and unable to assist in his defense.
In 2023, a military mental health panel found Mr. bin al-Shibh mentally incompetent to face trial. It concluded, among other things, that he was incapable of rational thought because he refused to engage in plea negotiations to spare him a death sentence until after the delusional C.I.A. campaign of harassment stopped.
The judge at the time agreed and set his case aside.
David Bruck, Mr. bin al-Shibh’s lawyer, declined to comment on Tuesday’s ruling.
But several people who read the five-page decision said Colonel Hynes found that the government had not met the requirements for recommending that the case be restarted. All of them discussed the decision on the condition of anonymity because it was not released to the public.
They said the judge cited a requirement that a defendant have the “ability to understand the nature of the proceedings and to conduct or cooperate intelligently in the defense of the case.”
Left unclear by the ruling, and from a hearing last month, was whether reviving Mr. bin al-Shibh’s case requires a new assessment by a court ordered military mental health board.
In seeking to restart his case, prosecutors cited the opinion of a former prison psychiatrist that, based on his observations, Mr. bin al-Shibh could work with his lawyers when he wanted to do it. That military psychiatrist never met with Mr. bin al-Shibh.
Prosecutors agree that the prisoner has a delusional disorder but argue that it should not prevent him from working with his lawyers at a death-penalty trial. “Ramzi bin al-Shibh has a mental disorder and will likely have it until the day he dies,” Clayton G. Trivett Jr., the lead prosecutor, said at last month’s hearing.
Mr. bin al-Shibh is accused of trying to obtain visas so he could visit the United States and join the Sept. 11 attacks and, when that failed, helping to organize a cell of attackers in Hamburg, Germany.
The question of Mr. bin al-Shibh’s competency has shadowed the Sept. 11 conspiracy case since his first court appearance in 2008. Defense lawyers disclosed then that the prisoner was restrained with ankle shackles and being medicated with psychotropic drugs.
He has disrupted pretrial hearings over the years with outbursts, but sat calmly in a dark-colored tunic, trousers, sneakers and a red head scarf at last month’s hearing, his first court appearance in more than two years.
Mr. Trivett said that 90 percent of the problems at the prison that the colonel in charge deals with involve Mr. bin al-Shibh. Fifteen wartime prisoners remain at Guantánamo, six of them charged in capital cases.
Carol Rosenberg reports on the wartime prison and court at Guantánamo Bay. She has been covering the topic since the first detainees were brought to the U.S. base in 2002.
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