The army officer responsible for the prison at the Guantanamo Bay naval base where suspects in the 9/11 terrorist attacks are held Wednesday confirmed he was aware that the FBI had installed hidden audio and visual monitoring systems around the prison.
But Army Colonel John Bogdan told the military commission courtroom at Guantanamo on the Caribbean island of Cuba that once he discovered the systems, he issued an order that there was to be no monitoring of attorney-client meetings. Apart from his awareness of the FBI installations, Bogdan said that no one from any other US security agencies had contacted him about monitoring the meetings.
The five defendants in the case - the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Ramzi Binalshibh - chose not to be present for Wednesday's session of ongoing pre-trial hearings. They face the death penalty if convicted.
Their defence attorneys have pushed attorney-client privacy to the top of the legal agenda. This week, the judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, ordered changes in the courtroom audio system so that microphones do not pick up attorneys' conversations with their clients.