ACLU Asks Court to Order Government to Reveal Transcripts of Prisoner Abuse

[kpete]

Source: Washington Independent

ACLU Asks Court to Order Government to Reveal Transcripts of Prisoner Abuse
By Daphne Eviatar 9/18/09 3:41 PM

The American Civil Liberties Union today asked a Washington, D.C., federal court to require the federal government to release the transcripts of 14 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in which they describe abuse and torture suffered in CIA custody.

The transcripts come from the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which the military set up to determine whether suspects seized qualified as “enemy combatants.” Advocates hoped the Obama administration would release those documents, which Bush officials had previously refused to turn over. But the CIA turned over only heavily-redacted transcripts of the proceedings in June that continue to conceal the prisoners’ accounts of their treatment.

“While much is known about the Bush administration’s torture program, the CIA is continuing to censor the most important eyewitnesses – the torture victims themselves,” Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, said in a statement released today. “The CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogations in order to hide its crimes from the American public; the Obama administration should not prolong this cover-up by suppressing the victims’ firsthand accounts. The CSRT records will provide critical missing information about how the CIA’s torture program was actually carried out and will shed light on whether interrogators followed, or exceeded, Justice Department legal guidance that purported to authorize brutal interrogations.”

The government argues that it must continue suppressing the documents because releasing them would reveal “intelligence sources and methods” and might aid enemy “propaganda.”

Read more: http://washingtonindependent.com/60068/aclu-asks-court-to-order-government-to-reveal-transcripts-of-prisoner-abuse

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

1. kpete

thanks for posting this.

[EFerrari]

2. If we're no longer using these "methods", there should be no harm.

Right?

[Piewhacket]

3. no harm? not to me. it would do me great good, actually, but it

might harm those who used the methods, and their superiors.
and their lawyers (who were more like 'accomplices',
than 'lawyers').

it might harm the criminals, eferrari.
you know, the ones asking for the matter to be dropped.
the ones scrambling desperately to avoid prison or the hangman.

its not hard to spot them. start with the usual list and now add
the former cia directors under GW.

[EFerrari]

5. And the upper levels at the Bush inJustice Department and the Pentagon.

They all knew and collaborated.

[Piewhacket]

6. Yet another Deck of Cards in a great House of Cards.

[Overseas]

4. K&R. Thank you ACLU ! //nt