Courts torn over Guantanamo torture

November 3, 2:20 PMCivil Liberties ExaminerJ.D. Tuccille

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Last week, a federal judge threw out testimony from detainees at Guantanamo Bay to the effect that they've been mistreated by the U.S. government while being held in custody. Reports the ACLU:

A federal judge today allowed the Bush administration to withhold unredacted transcripts in which 14 prisoners now held at Guantánamo Bay describe abuse and torture they endured in CIA custody. The decision comes in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit filed in March to enforce a Freedom of Information Act request for records from Combatant Status Review Tribunals that determine if prisoners held by the Defense Department at Guantánamo qualify as "enemy combatants."

Almost at the same time, though, federal Judge Cecilia Altonaga rejected the Bush administration's controversial Bybee memo, which justified the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" acts short of of very narrowly defined torture for the extraction of information from prisoners. Presiding over the trial of a man accused of committing torture and looking to the memo for legal support, Judge Altonaga said, "I will not give an instruction that relies upon that memorandum as its authority."

These developments are important because a confession was thrown out in a war crimes case against Mohammed Jawad, a Guantanamo detainee, just last week, based on the judge's finding that the confession had been extracted through the use of torture. That is, torture isn't just an abstract concern to be touched upon by legal theorists -- its actual use and the consequences of that use are issues right now.

The Jawad case has been a slow-moving train wreck from the beginning. Prosecutor Darrel Vandeveld very publicly resigned after raising allegations that the defendant had been drugged and mistreated. The disposal of the confession raises further questions about the viability of the case -- but also about the legitimacy of the rules under which the defendants are being detained and questioned.

If the military tribunals are to retain a shred of credibility, suppressing evidence of mistreatment of prisoners after examples of torture have been exposed and such torture has been ruled unacceptable is not the way to go.

Contact J.D.: civilliberties (at) tuccille.com