US allowed to withhold torture documents
Google News/AFP
October 30, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A federal judge has allowed the US government to withhold requested testimony of torture and abuse 14 Guantanamo prisoners allegedly suffered in CIA custody, a human rights group that made the request has said.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it filed in March a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents from the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which decide if prisoners at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, qualify as "enemy combatants."

The US government has come under scathing criticism for allowing interrogation techniques that at best border on torture to be used on terrorist suspects detained indefinitely at US prisons in Guantanamo and Iraq.

US authorities have argued that mistreatment at the prisons arose from a handful of out-of-control military jailers, as internal debate raged from mid-2002 over techniques such as waterboarding, sexual humiliation, menacing dogs and sensory deprivation.

Commenting on the federal judge's decision Wednesday allowing the government to withhold unredacted transcripts, ACLU attorney Ben Wizner criticized the national security argument used by the government in justifying rejecting the ACLU's request.

"The government has suppressed these detainees' allegations of brutal torture not to protect any legitimate national security interests, but to protect itself from criticism and liability," he said.

"This decision allows the (President George W.) Bush administration to continue its illegal cover-up of its systemic torture polices," he added.

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