The military court at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruled on Thursday that one of the accused masterminds of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US was unfit to stand trial due to psychological damage. linked to the torture he suffered during his detention, according to the American newspaper New York Times.

Ramzi bin al-Saiba, 51, from Yemen, is expected to appear in a military court along with four other defendants for a trial in which they could face the death penalty.

However Colonel Matthew McCall, a military judge, ruled that his psychological injuries prevented him from defending himself in a trial. according to the newspaper.

Doctors at the US Guantanamo base diagnosed that Ramzi ben Al Shaiba suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and psychotic symptoms, as well as delusional disorder.

Military psychiatrists said his condition makes him “unable to understand the nature of the proceedings against him or to cooperate mentally” with his defense team at trial, the New York Times adds.

Ben al-Saiba has complained for years that he is “tormented by invisible forces that shake his bed and his cell and that pinch his genitals, preventing him from sleeping,” the paper said.

His lawyer stated that that his client had been tortured by the CIA and that he had gone insane after what the agency called “enhanced interrogation techniques”, which include sleep deprivation, simulated drowning and beatings.

Today the defendant is expected to appear in preliminary proceedings along with Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in the US, and the other three defendants, all of whom have been held for more than 15 years at Guantanamo and have not yet been tried by the military court tasked with trying them.

Today’s preliminary hearing has been decided to take place, according to the NYT.