[NYTr] "High value" Gitmo Gulag detainee alleges torture

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP via San Fran Chronicle - Dec 8, 2007

Attorneys Say Terror Suspect Tortured

By Michael Melia
Associated Press

San Juan, Puerto Rico  -- A suspected "high-value" terrorist taken to
Guantanamo last year alleges he was tortured in overseas CIA prisons
and is now suffering physical and psychological trauma as a result, one
of his attorneys said Saturday.

Lawyers for Majid Khan have sought a federal court order for the
government to preserve any evidence of torture, arguing that evidence
of harsh interrogation techniques is key to their client proving he has
no ties to al-Qaida. The motion was filed prior to Thursday's
announcement that the agency had destroyed videotapes of the
interrogations of two top terror suspects.

Khan, the only U.S. resident among 15 so-called high-value detainees,
described the alleged abuse in October during his first meetings with
attorneys at the Guantanamo Bay Navy base in Cuba.

He was the first high-value detainee to meet privately with an attorney
at Guantanamo.

Wells Dixon, who was not authorized to share details of his client's
account, said Khan had a lot to say about his treatment in CIA custody.
"He was subjected to state-sanctioned torture," Dixon alleged.

A Central Intelligence Agency spokesman denied allegations that it
tortured Khan or any others as part of its terror interrogation effort
that began in 2002.

Khan, a 1999 graduate of a Baltimore-area high school, was seized in
Pakistan in March 2003 and held until last year in secret CIA custody.
In September 2006, U.S. authorities transferred him and other high-value
detainees to Guantanamo, where they may be charged and face prosecution
under a new military tribunal system.

After hearing Khan's account of his time in CIA custody, his attorneys
sought the court order for the government to preserve evidence of
torture.

"Khan admitted anything his interrogators demanded of him, regardless
of the truth (redacted) in order to end his suffering," according to
the attorneys' filing.

The U.S. has alleged that Khan plotted attacks in the U.S. and Pakistan
with one of the group's most dangerous operatives, 9/11 mastermind
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, including a plan to bomb American gas stations.

Dixon said Khan, 27, shows symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder
and is unlikely to recover fully from the effects of an interrogation
style that aimed to "intentionally and systematically inflict
suffering."

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the agency's interrogation program
that used "special methods of questioning" on a small number of
suspects has provided valuable insights into al-Qaida's operations and
foiled terrorist attacks.

"If the CIA, with its profound counter-terror knowledge, had not stepped
forward to interrogate hardened terrorists, people would be right to ask
why," Gimigliano said. "Our country is safer for it."

The military recently declassified a small portion of 500 pages of the
notes from the lawyers' conversations with Khan and they provide a rare
glimpse of life for men considered among the most dangerous terror
suspects.

Dixon said Khan, who has been on hunger strikes at Guantanamo, was
extremely thin, a contrast to the burly young man he had seen in
photographs. "I thought they got us the wrong prisoner," said Dixon,
one of two attorneys with the New York-based Center for Constitutional
Rights who met with Khan.

Khan has scars including one on his left arm where he chewed through an
artery in his elbow shortly after his transfer to the isolated military
outpost. He also showed signs of memory loss and had difficulty
concentrating, according to the notes.

The attorneys said Khan is held in an area known as "Camp 7," apart
from the prison camps that journalists visit on tours, and is allowed
to communicate with another high-value detainee, Abu Zubaydah.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said the military does
not disclose the location of individual detainees, partly because of
security concerns. He said all the roughly 305 detainees at Guantanamo
are treated humanely.

Military prosecutors have said they expect to charge as many as 80
prisoners. Only three detainees are currently facing charges at
Guantanamo, where men suspected of links to terrorism are held as
"enemy combatants" without the same rights as traditional prisoners of
war.