The Hill News

The CIA still has audio and visual recordings of interrogations from a secret prison it financed near Rabat, Morocco, according to a report by the Associated Press.

The two videotapes and one audiotape -- discovered in 2007 under a desk at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center -- are believed to hold the only footage that remains of the agency's interrogation of al-Qaeda operatives. A cache of 92 other videos, thought by officials to be the only recordings of interrogations that existed, was destroyed in 2005.

The remaining tapes show the 2002 interrogation sessions of 9/11 conspirator and Yemeni national Ramzi Binalshibh, who is facing trial as what prosecutors have called a "key f! acilitator" in the attacks.

His defense attorneys say such tapes would be "extremely relevant" in a trial setting for revealing Binalshibh's mental state and demonstrating whether he is fit to stand trial. He is currently being treated for schizophrenia.

Any footage could also shed light on CIA's practice of outsourcing certain operations of its 'black site' prisons to foreign governments.

The government has twice denied to a federal judge that the tapes existed.

Morocco has also never admitted the existence of the detention center near Rabat.

CIA spokesman George Little would not discuss the issue except to affirm that the agency would "continue to cooperate with inquiries into past counterterrorism practices."