US classifies detainee’s tribunal from own lawyers, raising eyebrows
Published: July 14, 2009
Updated 4 months ago
The United States is classifying the writings and testimony of an alleged terrorist whom interrogators waterboarded dozens of times, possibly in an effort to keep nettlesome CIA secrets under wraps, his attorneys say.
Lawyers for Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein — known more widely by the name Abu Zubaida — say the Pentagon has capriciously classified their client’s writings and statements to investigators, raising questions of why the government has sought to keep Zubaida’s assertions private. They argue, plausibly, that the US’ penchant for secrecy in Zubaida’s case may be linked to efforts to keep controversial intelligence activities out of the public eye.
Remarkably, the Pentagon has refused to provide transcripts of the Zubaida’s military tribunal even to his own lawyers.
In May, according to Walter Pincus of The Washington Post, the suspect’s lawyers asked the government in a legal brief why their client couldn’t be permitted to respond to claims regarding his activities.
“If Petitioner [Abu Zubaida] were able to respond, he would inform the public that [REDACTED] . . .” they wrote.
The US has argued that the Guantanamo detainee has commented on CIA detention and rendition programs which remain classified.
“That could be, for example, the locations of former CIA secret prisons and complicity of foreign governments,” Pincus writes. “In the declassified version of the lawyers’ first motion, the government blacked out footnotes to some but not all published articles that listed where the CIA ‘black sites’ may have been located, indicating that the redacted stories may have identified the correct countries.”
But Zubaida’s lawyers have argued that some of the information their client was said to have shared he couldn’t possibly have first hand knowledge of and are based solely on public reports.
Moreover, they note that the Obama Administration has declassified some of his remarks selectively. They released a declassified version of Zubaida’s military tribunal in which he describes his “months of suffering and torture” at the hands of US operatives or surrogates, but not the specific details of what his interrogators engaged in. Some of the practices of US operatives — including partial drowning, or waterboarding — were temporarily interpreted as legal by Bush Administration lawyers. Others, including torture by insects in contained spaces, were referred to in Bush Administration documents but are said to never have been used.
Zubaida’s “lawyers argue that the material should never have been classified in the first place,” Pincus writes. “They add, however, that they still have yet to receive ‘an unredacted complete transcript’ of [his] 2007 tribunal.”
The US executive order that allows for classification asserts that material to be classified must be “owned,” “produced” or “controlled” by the US government. The Justice Department has argued that because they effectively “own” Zubaida as a prisoner, they are in control of information he might provide.
His lawyers disagree.
“‘Control’ means government control over the agency that originates the information, not control over Abu Zubaida ‘by virtue of its power as a jailer,’” his lawyers say.
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same song, different conductor. sad, really. had hoped for better.
but, one must ask why this is happening. it’s not all on the new potus. congress shows absolutely no willingness to adopt meaningful legislation to address the problems it allowed the previous administration to create and the legislation it did pass under bush only muddied the judiciary’s role.
and some GOP senators today have the audacity to lecture Sotomayor on the rule of law.
.
First they came for…
… Never mind. I see it was for not.
.
consumetheconsumer, like the Sotomayor reference.
Basically, the US is no longer a ’special’ country. In fact, rather than being a ’shining city on the hill’, we’re becoming just one more shanty town next to the landfill.
The concept that the government “owns” a person being detained is against EVERYTHING America stands for. The idea is exceedingly abhorent to any freedom loving peoples! It’s the stupidest argument among the thousands of incredibly stupid arguments the US Department of Justice has made lately. What kind of retards are runnign the DOJ anyway? Oh wait after 8 years of bush cramming it full of Regent grads I think I know.
From his own lawyer because the govt. SAYS his comments where about operational and location secrets, yea right. They pulled my nails would be secret I guess. It’s called mission creap. In a sense the US moral and laws have incrementally poisoned to the point that we don’t even realize anymore that TORTURE IS TORTURE!!! Now as was said on television last night, we have endangered our own citizens by allowing torture. Now we will have our own citizens in other countries be waterboarded or raped or beaten because they can point to us and say you do it to and made it alright. If say North Korea imprisons 2 female journalists ;), they can keep the trial private because of state secret laws and say that they where acting as state agitators.
In order to protect a handful of people, we sacrifice the dignity and the lives of the US and american people.
Is our military telling and controlling what the president what he can or can not do..
Or does Obama have as much lies and BS as the Bush Administration…
Obama is running our country in the manner which he claim he was running against and was bringing a CHANGE and a TRANSPARENT government..
What lies and BS do we not see in Obama under the directions of Emanuel and who ever..