US confirms interrogation tapes

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Binalshibh was captured in Pakistan in 2002, and is being held in GuantanamoThe CIA does indeed have videotapes of the interrogation of a man suspected of helping to plot the September 11, 2001, attacks, despite twice telling the US justice department those tapes had been destroyed.
Ramzi Binalshibh was detained in Pakistan in 2002; the CIA said tapes of his interrogation were destroyed in 2005, when the agency destroyed dozens of other recordings.

But the Associated Press (AP) news agency reported on Tuesday that two videotapes and one audiotape still exist. They were discovered in 2007 under a desk at the CIA's counterterrorism centre and leaked to the news agency.

The recordings were made at a Moroccan detention facility near Rabat; intelligence officials told the AP that the facility was used to interrogate CIA prisoners.

The facility - part of the CIA's network of secret so-called "black prisons" - was reportedly financed by the CIA but managed by Moroccan authorities. The Yemen-born Binalshibh remains a prisoner in the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Thomas Durkin, his civilian lawyer, called the tapes "extremely relevant" to his client's case.

One other suspect - Binyam Mohamed, detained in Pakistan in 2002 - is known to have been transferred to a Moroccan jail.

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