US seeks to silence detainees on torture

The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk. The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release–even to the detainees' own attorneys–"could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage." According to government documents submitted to US District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26, terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots. The battle over legal rights for terrorism suspects detained for years in CIA prisons centers on Majid Khan, one of 14 high-value detainees transferred in September from the "black" sites to the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. A lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many detainees at Guantánamo, is seeking emergency access to him. The government, in trying to block lawyers' access to the 14 detainees, effectively asserts that the detainees' experiences are a secret that should never be shared with the public. Because Khan "was detained by CIA in this program, he may have come into possession of information, including locations of detention, conditions of detention and alternative interrogation techniques that is classified at the TOP SECRET//SCI level," an affidavit from CIA Information Review Officer Marilyn A. Dorn states. Gitanjali Gutierrez, an attorney for Khan's family, responded in a court document on Nov. 3 that there is no evidence that Khan had top-secret information. "Rather," she said, "the executive is attempting to misuse its classification authority... to conceal illegal or embarrassing executive conduct." Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor who has represented several detainees at Guantánamo, said the prisoners "can't even say what our government did to these guys to elicit the statements that are the basis for them being held. Kafka-esque doesn't do it justice. This is Alice in Wonderland." Khan, 26, immigrated from Pakistan and graduated high school in Maryland. According to documents filed on his behalf by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Khan was arrested in Pakistan in 2003. During more than three years in CIA custody, Khan was subjected to interrogation techniques that defense attorneys suggest amounted to torture. Kathleen Blomquist, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said that details of the CIA program must be protected from disclosure. She said the lawyer's proposal for talking with Khan "is inadequate to protect unique and potentially highly classified information that is vital to our country's ability to fight terrorism." Government lawyers also argue in court papers that detainees such as Khan previously held in CIA sites have no automatic right to speak to lawyers because the new Military Commissions Act, signed by President Bush last month, stripped them of access to US courts. The law also allows the military to arrest people overseas and detain them indefinitely without allowing them to use US courts to contest their detention. Captives who have spent time in the secret prisons, and their advocates, have said the detainees were sometimes tortured with techniques that included "waterboarding," which simulates drowning. Bush has declared that the administration will not tolerate the use of torture but has pressed to retain the use of unspecified "alternative" interrogation methods. In a separate court document filed on Nov. 3, Khan's attorneys offered declarations from Khaled al-Masri, a released detainee who said he was held with Khan in a dingy CIA prison called "the salt pit" in Afghanistan. There, prisoners slept on the floor, wore diapers and were given tainted water that made them vomit, Masri said. US interrogators treated him roughly, he said, and told him he "was in a land where there were no laws." Ex-judges: detainee law unconstitutional Seven retired federal judges from both political parties have joined dozens of Guantánamo Bay detainees in urging an appeals court to declare key parts of Bush's new anti-terrorism law unconstitutional. The judges, in a rare court filing on Nov. 1, said stripping courts of the right to question how the military handles terrorism suspects "challenges the integrity of our judicial system" and effectively sanctions the use of torture. "We believe that compelling this court to sanction executive detentions based on evidence that has been condemned in the American legal system since our nation's founding erodes the vital role of the judiciary in safeguarding the rule of law," the judges wrote. The brief was filed by retired Judges Shirley M. Hufstedler, Nathaniel R. Jones, George N. Leighton, Timothy K. Lewis, Frank J. McGarr, Abner J. Mikva and Patricia M. Wald. Three of the judges–Leighton, Lewis and McGarr–were appointed by Republican presidents. Though Congress banned the use of torture in the military commission law, the judges said military documents revealed evidence of torture that officials didn't properly address. In one instance cited in court documents, a man who denied receiving artillery training said an interrogator beat him until he bled from his head. "I was in a lot of pain, so I said I had the training," the man said, according to a transcript cited in court documents. "At that point, if he had asked me if I was Osama bin-Laden, I would have said yes." Without the court system, the judges said, there is no check on such behavior. In their own court filings, lawyers for the detainees argued that the law is unconstitutional because it prevents people from challenging their detention in US courts–a right that attorneys said the framers of the Constitution never would have allowed to be stripped. "Persons imprisoned without charge must retain the right to obtain a court inquiry into the factual and legal bases for their imprisonment," attorneys wrote. This argument echoes a Supreme Court ruling in June in which the justices ruled that the Bush administration's system for trying enemy combatants violated US and international law. Within weeks, the president persuaded Congress to pass a law setting up military commissions and barring detainees from using the civilian court system. Shortly after the law was signed, the Justice Department told hundreds of detainees that their cases in the US courts had been rendered moot. In written arguments on Nov. 1, attorneys for more than 100 detainees who would be locked out of the regular judicial system asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to let the detainees keep their legal challenges going in civilian courts. The Justice Department has until Nov. 13 to respond in court.