The Guantanamo Bay military detention camp was previously used to hold refugees deemed troublesome in the 1990s but after the U.S.'s War on Terror began in 2011 it began to house terrorism suspects, such as in the now-defunct Camp X-Ray seen here. Classified information made its way to the public after a mistake committed by a Guantanamo military commission, a court document recently revealed. File photo by Ezra Kaplan/UPI
WASHINGTON, May 11 (UPI) -- Classified information related to a hearing for a Sept. 11 terror attack defendant at Guantanamo Bay unintentionally made its way to computers used by defense lawyers, prosecutors and a military judge.
The lawyers for Mustafa al-Hawsawi, a Saudi Arabian defendant accused in the Sept. 11 attacks, revealed the incident in a court submission filed in April that complained about how the incident placed limitations how how they accessed information in their client's case.
The lawyers argue the incident led to increased difficulty in gaining access to classified information and access to their own equipment, as some computers used by Hawsawi's defense team were analyzed for hours at a time.
"On February 23, 2016, counsel for the government emailed the defense advising that certain exhibits the defense used, which the government had turned over in discovery, were in fact classified although they had not been marked as such at the time the government turned them over," Hawsawi's attorneys wrote. "As a result of this government determination, the majority of computers of counsel, paralegals and other case personnel in the defense are having to be cleaned (or 'scrubbed'), a process which on average involves each defense team members' computer being unavailable for approximately six hours."
The computers of the prosecution team, other personnel and of the judge appointed in the case "have also undergone this scrub process," the defense filing said.
Politico reported the information deleted from the Feb. 23 Guantanamo military commission transcripts appear to be the identify of one or more people involved in the CIA interrogation program for terrorism suspects.
