Posted on Sun, Dec. 09, 2007

Lawyers for a Guantánamo detainee from Baltimore are asking a federal court to order the Bush administration to preserve evidence of how their client was treated in three-plus years of CIA custody, saying they have ample evidence that he was tortured.

In a heavily censored court filing obtained by The Miami Herald, lawyers for Majid Khan argue their client ''was subjected to a program of state-sanctioned torture'' while in CIA custody.

SPECIAL CAMP

The filing, delivered under seal Thursday to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, comes as Congress and the Justice Department opened investigations into the CIA destruction of tapes of interrogations of two other men held at Guantánamo with Khan in a special prison camp for ''high-value'' detainees.

The U.S. government denies that it engages in torture. Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said Saturday the government was ''reviewing the allegations'' and ``preparing a response to the motion which we will file with the court.''

Lawyers Gitanjali Gutierrez and Wells Dixon met for two weeks in mid-October with Khan at Guantánamo, where he is held in a secret prison for former ''ghost detainees,'' called Camp 7, according to the recently declassified notes of their meetings.

They found him with a scar on his arm from trying to gnaw through an artery, and he still suffers psychological trauma, they wrote in the notes.

From those interviews they crafted the brief, which has two still-secret appendices, that speaks of both Khan's treatment in captivity and that of 'prisoners who were similarly abducted, imprisoned and tortured by U.S. personnel at CIA `black sites' around the world.''

CIA censors redacted, or blacked out, from the brief who the lawyers say ran what they describe as ``The CIA Torture Program.''

Also, CIA censors completely blacked out two full pages that explain why, in the words of the lawyers, ``there is no doubt that Khan was subjected to a program of state-sanctioned torture.''

There is no way to independently test the claims. Khan has been seen by no one but his lawyers and U.S. military and intelligence officials. None of the other former CIA-held captives detained at Guantánamo for more than a year have seen attorneys.

Still, the notes of the attorneys from the New York Center for Constitutional Rights also offer a glimpse inside the prison-within-a-prison at the offshore detention center.

The camp was opened apart from the other 300 or so captives when the high-value detainees arrived around Labor Day 2006 to prevent their tales from spreading to the other prisoners.

The lawyers' notes specify that Khan and another alleged arch-terrorist, Abu Zubaydeh, have contact with each other. Disclosure that the CIA destroyed the Abu Zubaydeh interrogation tapes triggered the ongoing investigations.

Khan was born in Pakistan but grew up near Baltimore, where he graduated from a suburban high school and got political asylum in the United States, where his father still lives. Khan was visiting Pakistan in March 2003, when, he claims, CIA agents kidnapped him in Karachi. He then disappeared into a secret interrogation program shielded even from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which tracks prisoners around the globe.

President Bush ordered him and 13 other former CIA-held captives to be moved to military custody in September 2006 -- among them alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

`AL QAEDA LINKS'

In October, granting the lawyers access to Khan, the Pentagon said he ``reportedly had links to al Qaeda operatives and facilitators, some who . . . involved him in a discussion of smuggling explosives into the United States.''

He has not been charged with a crime. But his lawyers say in the brief that secret CIA torture ``will be the central focus of any military commission proceedings involving Khan.''

Gutierrez was due back on the isolated Navy base in southeast Cuba Sunday night to meet with her client again, and to brief him on the ongoing effort to preserve evidence in his case at a U.S. circuit court, the only venue in which Guantánamo detainees can file appeals.

The attorneys said in their brief that, while in CIA custody, ``Khan admitted anything his interrogators demanded of him, regardless of the truth.''