US says Guantanamo detainee can pen letter about torture

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Biden government says it will allow a Guantanamo Bay detainee to provide Polish officials with information about his torture in CIA custody following the 9/11 attacks.

The Biden government’s decision was contained in a letter that government attorneys filed with the Supreme Court on Friday. The administration said it would allow detainee Abu Zubaydah to send a statement that could be handed over to Polish officials who are investigating his treatment at a secret CIA facility there.

The government said that inmates’ communications are usually limited to the family. The government noted, however, that a lawsuit in the United States involving Zubaydah already contained a public but edited statement from him describing his treatment in CIA custody.

Any statement written for Polish officials would be subject to a “security clearance”, the government said, but this “would not prevent him from describing his treatment in CIA custody”. Information in the letter “that could harm the security interests of the United States” could still be edited, the government said.

When he was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, Zubaydah was considered a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda. But Zubaydah’s lawyers say the CIA was wrong in believing he was a senior member of al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

The Biden administration’s complaint follows arguments the Supreme Court heard earlier this month in a case in which it was involved. The case concerns a request by Zubaydah and his lawyer to question two former CIA employees about Zubaydah’s detention in Poland. The Biden administration, like the Trump administration before, has spoken out against the questioning.

The fact that Zubaydah was held in so-called CIA black locations in both Thailand and Poland is widespread. The US government has also allowed information to be disclosed about his treatment. But the government has stopped recognizing the black sites that were set up after 9/11 to gather information about terrorist conspiracies against Americans. The government cited national security and its obligations to foreign partners when it resisted statements made by former CIA contractors in the Zubaydah case.

The higher regional court should decide on the case in the coming months.

Zubaydah spent four years in secret CIA offices before being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006. According to a 2014 Senate report on the CIA program, Zubaydah was waterboarded more than 80 times and spent over 11 days in a coffin-sized box, among other things. The extreme interrogation techniques used in the program are now widely regarded as torture.

The judges will next hear arguments in cases beginning November 1st.

On Monday, the Supreme Court also announced the addition of two cases to its calendar and issued two unsigned statements blocking trials against police officers accused of using excessive force. In one, officials in Tahlequah, Oklahoma shot a man brandishing a hammer. In the other, a suspect was sued after a Union City, California official “briefly placed his knee on the suspect’s back while he was handcuffed,” the court wrote. In both cases, the judges said that lower courts wrongly denied officials “qualified immunity,” a legal doctrine that protects against trial.

The two cases the court has approved relate to Indian Country. In one, the judges will consider an appeal from the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo tribe near El Paso, Texas over their right to play bingo games. The federally recognized tribe is embroiled in a decade-long legal battle with the state of Texas.

The other case concerns the double risk clause of the Fifth Amendment, which precludes a second charge on the same counts. The question for judges is whether a criminal conviction in an Indian court will prevent prosecutors from bringing charges for the same conduct. The case could have a significant impact on hundreds of tribal courts.