Gitmo attorneys accuse US of torture

Defense attorneys for five Guantanamo Bay detainees say their clients are prevented from open discussion of their maltreatment in the secret CIA prison.

The attorneys asked the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal on Tuesday to lift restrictions that bar their clients from publicly discussing the maltreatment at an upcoming trial. They say a court ruling on protecting the secrecy of detention time violates the UN Convention Against Torture.

The attorneys had earlier protested against new US violations in their communications with their clients, alleging continued searches of the inmates’ mail in the cells.

“Everywhere I turn in investigating this issue, we hit a brick wall,” said Cheryl Bormann, who represents Walid bin Attash, a Yemeni accused of training some of the Sept. 11 hijackers at an Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan.

Bormann and other defenders argued to Judge James Pohl, an Army colonel, that a government protective order governing trial preparation impairs their ability to file suit abroad under the UN Convention Against Torture and gags the detainees from telling other courts or governments about their secret CIA interrogations, Miami Herald reported.

The five detainees at the US prison, based in Cuba, said the maltreatment consisted of beatings, sleep deprivation, being subjected to temperature extremes, stress positions and waterboarding – a technique that simulates drowning.

The defense attorney of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, one of the five Guantanamo detainees, told the judge that the man was waterboarded 183 times and is currently forbidden to work with human rights groups to file a torture claim.

But prosecutors do not concede anyone was tortured, saying that the law forbids them from using coerced confessions at the death-penalty tribunal.

ARA/ARA

Source: Press TV