* Military judge is presiding over Guantanamo tribunals
* Order applies to defendants’ memories of CIA treatment
By Jane Sutton
MIAMI, Dec 12 (Reuters) – The U.S. military judge overseeing
the Guantanamo prosecution of five alleged conspirators in the
Sept. 11 attacks has issued an order maintaining secrecy over
the defendants’ experiences in clandestine CIA prisons.
The protective order safeguarding classified information in
the case was signed on Dec. 6 by the judge, Army Colonel James
Pohl, and unsealed on Wednesday.
It is not limited to documents formally labeled “Top Secret”
by the CIA or produced by the government, but also prohibits
disclosure of the defendants own “observations and experiences”
in the secret CIA detention, rendition and interrogation
program.
Pohl is the chief judge overseeing the war crimes tribunals
established by the United States to try foreign captives on
terrorism-related charges at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base
in Cuba.
The defendants in the 9/11 case, including the alleged
mastermind of the hijacked plane plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
and four other Pakistani, Yemeni and Saudi captives, face
charges that could lead to their execution.
All five were held in secret CIA prisons from the time of
their capture in 2002 and 2003 until they were sent to
Guantanamo in 2006. All have said they were tortured by their
U.S. captors and the CIA has acknowledged it subjected Mohammed
to the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding 183 times.
Pohl’s order prohibits public disclosure of any information
that would reveal where the defendants were held; the names,
identities and physical descriptions of anyone involved in their
capture, transfer, detention or interrogation; and details about
the interrogation techniques used on them.
Prosecutors had asked for the order and said it was needed to
prevent disclosure of information that could cause grave harm to
the security of the United States and its allies.
Defense lawyers and civil liberties advocates called it an
attempt to conceal torture and censor the defendants’ own
memories. They said the CIA made its interrogation techniques
public once it disclosed them to the defendants.
The ruling comes as the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence weighs whether to release a 6,000-plus-page report
analyzing the CIA detention and interrogation program that was
launched after the 9/11 attacks.
The report is expected to shed light on whether torture
produced information that led to the discovery of Osama bin
Laden’s whereabouts. U.S. special forces killed the al Qaeda
leader during a raid at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in
2011.
(Reporting by Jane Sutton; Editing by Bill Trott)
