Guantanamo prisoner wants court to have U.S. Senate torture report
By Lacey Ann Johnson FORT MEADE, Md. (Reuters) - Lawyers for a Saudi man held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba who is charged with orchestrating the suicide bombing of the USS Cole asked on Tuesday for a sealed copy of the Senate’s CIA torture report to be provided to a military judge for safekeeping. The request arose during a pre-trial hearing for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of being the mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 sailors. The Senate committee report from December describes how Nashiri on multiple occasions was waterboarded, a widely condemned interrogation technique that simulates drowning, according to a declassified summary. It also describes how he was threatened by his interrogators with a gun and power drill at CIA black sites, the summary said. Many Republicans criticized the decision by Democratic lawmakers to release the report, which was put together by the committee's Democratic majority, saying it would put Americans at risk. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Senator Richard Burr sent a letter in January to the White House requesting that all copies of the report be returned immediately, according to reports in The New York Times. We are concerned “that the Senate will claw back all the copies,” said defense attorney Richard Kammen. Kammen urged Judge Air Force Colonel Vance Spath to order an unredacted copy of the report be held for safekeeping, so Spath can determine whether the content is relevant to Nashiri’s case. Government prosecutors opposed the motion, saying they would determine which aspects of the 6,000-page report, if any, should be entered into evidence. “We are reviewing it … and we’re doing it in a very systematic, careful, way,” said Brigadier General Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor. “You cannot let it become a fishing expedition” into sensitive material. The hearing taking place at Guantanamo Bay prison was monitored via closed-circuit television at Fort Meade, outside Washington. (Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Cynthia Osterman)
