US judge upholds censoring CIA prisoner testimony

Source Agence France-Presse

A federal court upheld Friday the US government's decision to censor statements made by Guantanamo Bay detainees about their treatment at Central Intelligence Agency-run prisons. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a human rights group, had argued that the government should declassify redacted information contained in statements that detainees made before tribunals at Guantanamo Bay. But Judge Royce Lamberth of the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday declined the ACLU's request, which was made under the Freedom of Information Act. "The court finds that defendants have shown that damage to national security would reasonably result if the detainees' statements were disclosed, and that defendants did not classify portions of the detainees' statements to conceal violations of the law or prevent embarrassment," Lamberth wrote.