AP: Secret transfers hid top Gitmo detainees from courts

WASHINGTON - Four of the nation's most highly valued terrorist prisoners were secretly moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003, years earlier than has been disclosed, then whisked back into overseas prisons before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers, The Associated Press has learned.

The transfer allowed the United States to interrogate the detainees in CIA "black sites" for two more years without allowing them to speak with attorneys or human rights observers or challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Had they stayed at Guantánamo for three more months, they would have been afforded those rights.

"This was all just a shell game to hide detainees from the courts," said Jonathan Hafetz, a Seton Hall University law professor who has represented detainees.

Years later, the program's legacy continues to complicate President Barack Obama's efforts to prosecute the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks.

The arrival and speedy departure from Guantánamo were pieced together by the AP, using flight records and interviews with current and former U.S. officials and others familiar with the CIA's detention program. Top officials at the White House, Justice Department, Pentagon and CIA consulted on the prisoner transfer - so secretive that many close to the CIA detention program were kept in the dark.

CIA spokesman George Little said: "The so-called black sites and enhanced interrogation methods, which were administered on the basis of guidance from the Department of Justice, are a thing of the past."

Officials said Ramzi Binalshibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi admitted to helping plan the 9/11 attacks; Abd Al-Nashiri, to masterminding the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole; Abu Zubaydah, to being an al-Qaida travel facilitator. The four al-Qaida operatives, some of the CIA's biggest captures at the time, had spent months overseas enduring some of the harshest interrogation tactics in U.S. history.

By late summer 2003, the CIA believed the men, then held overseas, had revealed their best secrets. The agency needed somewhere to hold them, and Guantánamo Bay seemed a good fit. A federal appeals court unanimously had ruled detainees could not use U.S. courts, and the CIA had just constructed a new holding facility called Strawberry Fields, separate from the main prison at Guantánamo.

On Sept. 24, 2003, an unmarked Boeing 737 landed at Gitmo with the four men. Then in November, over objections from President George W. Bush's administration, the Supreme Court agreed to weigh Gitmo detainees' access to U.S. courts. On March 27, 2004, a Gulfstream IV jet left Cuba. By the time the Supreme Court ruled June 28 that detainees should have access to U.S. courts, the CIA had once again scattered the men throughout the black sites. Two years later, after The Washington Post revealed the existence of the program, Bush emptied the overseas prison network. Fourteen men, including the four from Gitmo, were moved to the island prison, where they have been ever since.

"Those charged with crimes will be given access to attorneys who will help them prepare their defense, and they will be presumed innocent," Bush said that fall.