- Ramzi bin al-Shibh is one of five defendants accused of being key accomplices to the 9/11 attacks.
- A military tribunal in Guantánamo Bay found bin al-Shibh mentally unfit for trial.
A Yemeni prisoner accused of being one of the key accomplices in the September 11, 2001, attacks was deemed mentally unfit to stand for trial, a military judge ruled on Thursday.
For years, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, 51, was detained in Guantánamo Bay under suspicion that he helped organize the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
He and four other defendants, including the accused mastermind of the plot, faced charges of conspiracy to carry out acts of terrorism and were set to go to trial in a military tribunal at the detention camp.
But in August, a military medical panel found that al-Shibh had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder due to torture and solitary confinement he underwent during his four years in CIA custody, The Associated Press reported.
Col. Matthew McCall, the military judge, agreed on Thursday that al-Shibh should be severed from the trial due to his mental state.
Pretrial proceedings for the other four defendants continued on Friday.
Bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni national, was first captured precisely a year after 9/11. He is accused of aiding one group of hijackers in Hamburg, Germany, to carry out the attacks.
Between 2002 and 2006, he was held in one of the CIA's "black site" prisons, or secret interrogation facilities, where he was subjected to torture that made him insane, his defense lawyer, David I. Bruck, has argued.
Some of the torture methods included holding bin al-Shibh in solitary confinement, depriving him of sleep, and forcing him to stand up while chained and wearing a diaper for days at a time, Bruck told the judge, according to The New York Times.
The prisoner also said that he was tortured by invisible figures that stung his genitals and caused his entire cell to shake, according to the report.
Bruck did not respond to a request for comment sent outside of working hours.
Prosecutors have pointed to bin al-Shibh's ability to comprehend some of the legal proceedings before him to argue that the defendant is fit for trial.
"However, the fact that Mr. bin al Shibh understands the serious nature of the charges and the capital nature of his case, and yet he still cannot focus his attention on those issues demonstrates the significant effect of his mental defect on him," the ruling stated.
Bruck said in a statement reported by the Times that Thursday's ruling is vindication of the severe impacts on defendants of the CIA's torture program.
"It is no longer possible" to deny "that the CIA torture program did profound harm to the people subjected to it," he said.
Spokespersons for the CIA and Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment sent outside of working hours.