CIA’s request to keep torture details secret in Guantanamo trial granted

Details of the CIA’s interrogation program will remain secret, a Guantanamo judge has ruled in granting the Pentagon’s request to censor testimony of the five detainees accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The ruling was quickly condemned by civil libertarians who have accused the U.S. government of using Orwellian restrictions to avoid accusations of torture.

“For now, the most important terrorism trial of our time will be organized around judicially approved censorship of the defendants’ own thoughts, experiences and memories of CIA torture,” Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Program wrote in a statement.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda’s former No. 3 and the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, is jointly charged with four other detainees on 2,976 counts of murder for those killed when hijacked planes crashed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

All five were held in the CIA’s so-called “black sites” before being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006. U.S. President Barack Obama closed the agency-run facilities and outlawed the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation tactics” shortly after taking office three years later.

A broad ranging “protective order” governing the military commission proceedings, now upheld by Army Judge Col. James Pohl, prohibits the accused from talking about their CIA custody, including “their observations and experiences.”

Pohl also approved of a 40-second court delay, which gives a security official the ability to cut the audio feed to a court viewing area separated by double-pane Plexiglas.

Shamsi was among those who argued before Guantanamo’s military commission in October against the protective order’s “overbroad categories” and court audio delay which she said transformed the courtroom into a “censorship chamber.”

But Pohl agreed with the government’s assertions — based on declarations provided by the CIA, FBI and Pentagon — that government sources, methods and activities would be revealed and threaten national security if the restrictions were not in place.

“The Commission is acutely aware of its twin responsibilities of insuring the transparency of the proceeding while at the same instance preserving the interests of national security,” Pohl wrote about the 40-second delay in his Dec. 6 ruling, which was unsealed Wednesday.

“Commission finds the brief delay is the least intrusive and least disruptive method of meeting both responsibilities.”

Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Michelle Shephard