Rebuffing a Bush Administration suggestion that the courts stay out of the controversy over the destroyed Central Intelligence Agency videotapes, a U.S. District judge in Washington on Tuesday ordered a hearing for Friday morning on whether the Agency violated a court order. Tapes destroyed in November 2005 recorded aggressive interrogation techniques of terrorist suspects
Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees have argued that the destroyed tapes may have evidence that would bear on the legality of the government’s handling of information that may be used to keep detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
District Judge Henry H. Kennedy, Jr., acting on the plea of lawyers for the Yemeni nationals who are detained, set a hearing for 11 a.m. Friday. (The order can be downloaded here.)
Because of the brevity of the judge’s order, it is unclear how wide-ranging the hearing will be. The detainees’ lawyers, in a filng on Monday, said they were only seeking an encounter in court that “would be no more disruptive [of the government’s own probes of the incident] than a status conference. The purpose of such a hearing would be to take the lay of the land and determine what steps, if any, might be appropriate.” In short, they suggested, they were asking only for “a hearing to decide whether further inquiry is warranted…”
When the Justice Department filed its opposition to any court inquiry last Friday, it said such a judicial proceeding was “both unnecessary and potentially disruptive” at a time when the Department and the CIA were making their own inquiries into the destruction of the tapes.
The Department seemed especially troubled at the prospect that CIA and perhaps Department officials might be summoned to be questioned before Judge Kennedy — as the detainees’ lawyers had originally requested. That does not appear to be a prospect, at least for the initial hearing set for Friday, since the judge’s order contains no mention of who was to appear. The lawyers for both sides, of course, will be there.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY