Achmed Gullani, a detainee from the Guantanamo Bay, recently stood trial in the US on 281 charges including murder and attempted murder. He was cleared of all of the charges bar one on the grounds that his confession had been extracted from him whilst in detention in a ‘black prison’.
Black prisons are those located in other countries where the Geneva Convention does not apply and where human rights are generally disregarded. Inmates sent to these prisons are subjected to torture by the CIA in order to extract confessions with which they hope to convict the detainee.
This is a landmark ruling by the American courts which sends out the message that evidence gathered by these means will in future be deemed inadmissible in court. Gullani was however found guilty on one charge of conspiring to damage government property for which crime he could be sentenced to up to 28 years in prison./TE
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