Appeals Panel Rejects Admin's 'State Secrets' Defense Used To Deny Torture Victims Day In Court

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4/28/2009, 9:50 p.m. ET
Associated Press

Five men who claim to have been kidnapped and tortured at the direction of CIA agents are entitled to their day in court to expose alleged U.S. government abuse of war-on-terror captives, a federal appeals panel ruled Tuesday.

Both former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama had invoked their state secrets privilege in urging courts to dismiss a lawsuit in which the prisoners detailed interrogations involving beatings, electric shocks and laceration by scalpel.

While acknowledging that some evidence might be classified and properly shielded from public scrutiny, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the president's powers to protect against intelligence disclosures "are not the only weighty constitutional values at stake."

The ruling sends back for trial the case of Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. -- a suit brought by five men subjected to "extraordinary rendition," in which terror suspects were snatched by U.S. and foreign agents and flown to secret CIA interrogation sites. The U.S. government had intervened to halt the case on state secrets grounds. A Boeing Co. subsidiary, Jeppesen is accused of complicity for having arranged the men's clandestine transport.

"According to the government's theory, the judiciary should effectively cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its partners from the demands and limits of the law," the unanimous opinion by the appeals panel reads.

read more: http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/national/index.ssf?/base/national-3/1240972832261580.xml&storylist=national

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from the ACLU:

Government Cannot Claim State Secrets To Deny Torture Victims Day In Court

NEW YORK –

"This historic decision marks the beginning, not the end, of this litigation," said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, who argued the case for the plaintiffs. "Our clients, who are among the hundreds of victims of torture under the Bush administration, have waited for years just to get a foot in the courthouse door. Now, at long last, they will have their day in court. Today's ruling demolishes once and for all the legal fiction, advanced by the Bush administration and continued by the Obama administration, that facts known throughout the world could be deemed 'secrets' in a court of law."

In its ruling, the court wrote that "the Executive's national security prerogatives are not the only weighty constitutional values at stake," and quoted the Supreme Court's decision in Boumediene v. Bush that security depends on the "freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adhering to the separation of powers."

"The extraordinary rendition program is well known throughout the world," said Steven Watt, a staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program. "The only place it hasn't been discussed is where it most cries out for examination – in a U.S. court of law. Allowing this case to go forward is an important step toward reaffirming our commitment to domestic and international human rights law and restoring an America we can be proud of. Victims of extraordinary rendition deserve their day in court."

"I am happy to hear this news," said Bisher Al-Rawi, a plaintiff in this case who was released from Guantánamo last year without ever having been charged with a crime. "We have made a huge step forward in our quest for justice."

read more: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/rendition/39489prs20090428.html


More information about the case is available online at: www.aclu.org/jeppesen

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