Guantanamo judge to US government: Preserve what's left of CIA 'black sites'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/12/20/212379/guantanamo-judge-to-us-government.html

Guantanamo judge to US government: Preserve what's left of CIA 'black sites'
By CAROL ROSENBERG
The Miami Herald
December 20, 2013

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — The military judge in the Sept. 11 case has ordered the U.S. government to preserve whatever remnants exist of the CIA's Bush-era secret prisons known as the "black sites," defense and prosecution lawyers said Friday.

Army Col. James L. Pohl, who in 2004 issued a similar order forbidding destruction of the Abu Ghraib prison where guards abused prisoners in Iraq, issued the single-page protective order on Thursday, according to two lawyers who read the ruling. It was still under seal at the war court Friday.

It does not specify the number of black sites in the secret network, which President Barack Obama ordered closed soon after taking office, Pentagon defense attorney Jay Connell said. Nor does the order name the countries that let the CIA set up its secret prisons where three Guantanamo captives were waterboarded, two of them now in death penalty proceedings before Judge Pohl.

"The motion of the Defense to preserve evidence of any existing overseas detention facilities within control of the United States is granted subject to subsequent modification," Pohl wrote, according to those allowed to read the three-paragraph ruling.