American authorities have found that numerous jihadists taken into custody have been open and forthcoming about details of terrorist plots and the organizations that are planning them,
according to The New York Times.
Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who was arrested last year and brought to the United States waived his Miranda rights and told authorities, "I am willing to tell you anything, and will not hold back." He added, "You will hear things of al-Qaida that you never imagined."
Ghaith pleaded not guilty, but was sentenced to life in prison last month after offering vast amounts of information to law enforcement, some of which was used against him in court, the Times reported.
Faisal Shahzad, the terrorist who tried to
detonate a car bomb in Times Square in 2010, also waived his rights against self incrimination. He was questioned by officials about "sensitive national security and law enforcement matters," and later pleaded guilty. He will serve a life sentence.
And Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, accused of being a Libyan al-Qaida operative, was captured last year and subsequently waived his rights.
He spoke freely with investigators and gave incriminating information to the FBI.
He ultimately pleaded not guilty, however, and his lawyer moved to suppress statements he had made, arguing they had been made following "countless hours of abusive interrogation" by the CIA, and that he had been pressured into waiving his rights, according to the Times.
Some defendants, like Ruqai, have said they offered information out of fear of facing torture tactics, such as waterboarding, that became infamous in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
"I was convinced that I would end up in one of CIA's black site torture prisons," Ruqai said in one of his filings, according to the Times.
Defense lawyers and former prosecutors told the Times that some terrorism defendants want to speak openly as a bragging right or a badge of honor.
"They want to boast, particularly if they have ever done something to harm 'the infidel,'" David Raskin, former chief of the terrorism unit in the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, told the Times.
Linda Morena, a terrorism defense lawyer, told the Times, "I think it's cultural in part. They're not raised in this system, and they don't grow up with the holy notion that you have the right to remain silent ingrained in their psyche."
The Times reported that international terrorists have willingly provided information to authorities as far back as 1995. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who orchestrated the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, spent six hours giving information to authorities while being flown from Pakistan to the United States.
One former FBI agent, Ali Soufan, told the Times that in his experience, the "higher the operatives are in the pyramid of the terrorist organization, the easier it is to talk to them."
Many terrorists, he told the Times, "feel what they are doing is an extension of their jihad, is part of their cause." He added, "They are willing to die for it, so if given the right opportunity, they are not going to deny it."
Soufan said there is no one specific approach to interrogations of terrorist suspects.
"What works on one subject does not necessarily work on the other," he told the Times. "But if you know how to do it and you know what button to push, intellectually and mentally, these guys will talk."
He added, "Sometimes, the problem is in shutting them up."
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