WASHINGTON (AFP) — A US appeals court has ordered President George W. Bush's administration to preserve any evidence relevant to a case involving a US national held at Guantanamo Bay who alleges he was tortured while in CIA hands.
Coming just days after the Central Intelligence Agency admitted it had destroyed videotapes of harsh interrogations of terror suspects, the preliminary order by the federal appeals court Tuesday said the government had to protect any evidence related to the case of Majid Khan, the only US national among 15 "high-value" detainees at the Guantanamo base in Cuba.
Khan, 27, a legal US resident and Pakistani never charged with a crime during his three years detained by the CIA, has alleged he was tortured by the spy agency.
In a motion submitted to the court by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Khan, who was detained in 2003 in Karachi, was said to have been subjected "to an aggressive CIA detention and interrogation program notable for its elaborate planning and ruthless application of torture."
The 25-page motion released publicly was heavily edited to remove any references deemed by government authorities as sensitive to US national security interests.
The filing alleged the government had a record of destroying evidence related to its interrogation of "war on terror" suspects.
"Absent a preservation order, there is a substantial risk that the torture evidence will disappear," it said.
According to the ruling Tuesday, the government has until December 20 to respond.
Last week CIA chief Michael Hayden admitted that in 2005 the agency had destroyed videotapes of interrogations of terror suspects, at a time when the US Congress was investigating allegations of torture.
Khan is alleged by US authorities to be an Al-Qaeda operative who was selected by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, for a possible attack in the United States.
He lived in Baltimore, Maryland before his capture in Pakistan in 2003, and was taken to Guantanamo last September after being held in secret CIA detention centers.
Khan and more than a dozen other terror suspects were transferred to Guantanamo from secret CIA detention facilities last year.
In announcing the transfer of the detainees to Guantanamo in September, Bush acknowledged that they had been subjected to "tough" interrogation tactics by the CIA but insisted they were "safe and lawful and necessary."
The Pentagon announced in October that Khan had been granted access to a civilian defense attorney.
The CCR said in April that the detainee's father submitted a statement to the military tribunal in Guantanamo, charging that his son was tortured by US interrogators.
"Torture and abuse inflicted upon Majid Khan by US personnel in the early days of his detention in Pakistan... including beatings, stress positions, and sleep deprivation, as well as an account of the abuse of children as young as six years old at the same facility," the statement said.
"The Americans tortured him for eight hours at a time, tying him tightly in stressful positions in a small chair until his hands, feet and mind went numb .... This torture only stopped when Majid agreed to sign a statement that he was not even allowed to read," it said.
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