From the Los Angeles Times

ACLU sues to demand Guantanamo disclosures

The organization seeks to have the federal government reveal prisoners' accounts describing alleged mistreatment that were deleted from transcripts made publicly available.

By Carol J. Williams
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

8:56 AM PDT, March 13, 2008

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- The American Civil Liberties Union sued the federal government today to demand full disclosure of Guantanamo prisoners' descriptions of waterboarding and any other torture they said they suffered at the hands of CIA interrogators.

Details of the alleged mistreatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 13 other "high-value" detainees in the Bush administration's war on terror were deleted from transcripts made available to the press and public after each of the suspects was questioned during Combatant Status Review Tribunals last year.

"As the Guantanamo era enters its seventh shameful year, the government still refuses to level with the American people. Its stonewalling is illegal and obstructs the public's right to know the truth about torture and abuse conducted in our name," said Ben Wizner, an ACLU staff attorney monitoring the war-crimes tribunal proceedings here this week.

In some cases, page after page of the CSRT transcripts were completely blacked out by censors claiming national security interests were at stake if the prisoner's statements were made public.

"The Bush administration is suppressing the prisoners' allegations not for national security reasons but to protect government officials from embarrassment, criticism and possible criminal prosecution," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project. "Neither the Freedom of Information Act nor the 1st Amendment permits the government to withhold information on these grounds."

The ACLU also was among the legal rights watchdog groups protesting Bush's veto of legislation last week that would have forbid any U.S. agency using waterboarding or other coercive interrogation techniques not authorized by the U.S. Army field manual.

The government had no immediate response to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington.