[Ppnews] Suit by 5 ex-captives of CIA can proceed, appeals panel rules

[Political Prisoner News]

Suit by 5 ex-captives of CIA can proceed, appeals panel rules

The U.S. government cannot avoid trial by claiming the state secrets 
privilege in the lawsuit brought by ex-Guantanamo detainee Binyam 
Mohamed and four others, who allege they were tortured.
By Carol J. Williams - LA Times

1:32 PM PDT, April 28, 2009

The president cannot avoid trial of a lawsuit brought by five former 
CIA captives, who allege they were tortured, by proclaiming the 
entire case a protected state secret, a federal appeals panel ruled today.

Both former President George W. Bush and President Obama's Justice 
Department lawyers had argued before federal courts that a lawsuit 
brought by former Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed and four others 
should be dismissed in the interests of national security.

The lawyers argued that "the very subject matter" of the allegations 
that U.S. agents kidnapped and tortured terrorism suspects was 
entitled to the protections of the president's state secrets 
privilege. In a move that surprised many human rights groups, the 
Obama administration declined to revise the Bush lawyers' claims that 
the case needed to be dismissed to protect national security.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 
that the executive privilege claim was excessive and the case could 
go to trial. The lawsuit by the five alleged torture victims is 
against Jeppesen Dataplan, a Boeing Co. subcontractor accused of 
complicity in the men's mistreatment for having flown them to secret 
CIA interrogation sites after they were nabbed abroad by federal agents.

Previous lawsuits alleging abuse were brought against the U.S. 
government and dismissed by the courts presented with presidential 
claims of state secrets privilege.

Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan now goes back to U.S. District Court in 
San Francisco for trial, with the U.S. government, which is backing 
Jeppesen, free to argue that specific documents or pieces of evidence 
can be protected from disclosure if they pose a genuine national 
security risk, but not the entire case, said the opinion.

"By excising secret evidence on an item-by-item basis, rather than 
foreclosing litigation altogether at the outset, the evidentiary 
privilege recognizes that the executive's national security 
prerogatives are not the only weighty constitutional values at 
stake," said the unanimous opinion written by Circuit Judge Michael 
Daly Hawkins, an appointee of President Clinton.

Human rights advocates hailed the ruling as the first opportunity for 
torture victims to bring the U.S. government to account for its 
"extraordinary rendition" actions in which dozens of foreign 
terrorism suspects were snatched abroad and transported to secret 
interrogation sites by CIA and other agents and subjected to harsh 
techniques now recognized by U.S. officials as torture.

Mohamed, the lead plaintiff, was released from the U.S. prison in 
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in late February after having spent more than 
six years in U.S. custody, the first two years in the hands of 
Moroccan interrogators under CIA guidance and later at the 
intelligence agency's "black site" in Bagram, Afghanistan.

Rights lawyers hailed the ruling as a breach in the wall of secrecy 
erected by the Bush administration and thus far maintained by President Obama.

"To date, no torture victim has achieved any measure of justice or 
compensation in the U.S. courts, in large part because the courts 
have allowed the executive to invoke overbroad secrecy claims," said 
Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who 
argued the case before the 9th Circuit panel in February.

A Justice Department spokeswoman, Tracy Schmaler, said government 
lawyers were "reviewing the judges' order."

<mailto:carol.williams at latimes.com>carol.williams at latimes.com



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