Allow Gitmo detainees to speak (NYT via Monterey County Herald)

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The Monterey County Herald
Updated: 05/08/2009 01:37:45 AM PDT

... One missing element is the words of prisoners subjected to waterboarding and other brutality.

Those voices remain muffled by a combination of Bush-era resistance to a reasonable Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union, and the gag order imposed on lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees. Attorney General Eric Holder needs to promptly repudiate both.

For two years, the ACLU has been seeking complete transcripts of the hearings at Guantanamo for 14 men who were previously in CIA custody, including Abu Zubaydah, who has been described as an operative of al-Qaida and was waterboarded at least 83 times. But the publicly released version of the transcripts deleted detainee statements about their ordeals ...

Destruction of the CIA's interrogation videos has eliminated crucial evidence of the horrors heaped on key detainees. It is unclear exactly when the torture began, and whether the procedures stayed within limits set forth by Bush's legal team. That makes it all the more important for the Obama administration to let detainees' voices be heard ...

http://www.montereyherald.com/opinion/ci_12324574?nclick_check=1