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Vol. 76/No. 30      August 13, 2012

 
Guantánamo: secret hearing
seeks to conceal CIA torture
 
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS  
A military judge held a secret hearing July 18 in the case of Guantánamo detainee Abd al-Rahm al-Nashiri. The Barack Obama administration is seeking the death penalty. The defendant was not even allowed to attend the session, called to hear defense motions seeking discovery about how al-Nashiri was tortured while held in secret CIA prisons.

Al-Nashiri, 47, is accused by Washington of helping to organize an attack by al-Qaeda on the U.S. destroyer Cole in 2000 that killed 17 sailors.

Al-Nashiri was arrested in 2002 in Dubai. Over the next four years he was tortured in CIA secret prisons in Thailand, Afghanistan and Poland. Since 2006 he has been held at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Judge Col. James Pohl has not ruled on the defense motions, the prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, told the media. Instead, the private hearing with government and defense lawyers was held “to determine whether any part of it could be discussed in open court,” reported Reuters.

“To me, the starting point is what the government doesn’t want to be revealed,” stated Judge Pohl, according to the Miami Herald. “They’re the gatekeeper on that as far as I’m concerned.”

A censored version of a CIA report made public in 2009 reported that al-Nashiri was subjected to waterboarding and hooded, shackled and stripped naked during interrogation sessions. U.S. agents interrogated him at gunpoint, revved up a power drill near his head and faked the execution of another prisoner, according to the report.

The New York Times, Fox News, Miami Herald, Reuters, the Tribune Company and Washington Post have requested that the judge allow them to cover al-Nashiri’s trial, scheduled to start Nov. 9.

In a related development, on June 11 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear, without comment, appeals by seven of the 169 men being held at the U.S. Guantánamo Bay military prison.

The rejected appeals include two detainees from Yemen who won their cases at the trial court level, but had the verdict reversed following the government’s appeal to a higher federal court.

The Supreme Court also rebuffed Adnan Latif, incarcerated at Guantánamo since 2002. A district judge ordered his release, but an appeals court reversed this.

A lower court order to release Hussain Salem Mohammad Almerfedi, imprisoned since 2003, was also blocked by appellate judges. “Government attorneys argued that Almerfedi stayed at an al Qaida-affiliated guesthouse,” reported the Associated Press.  
 
 
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