Judge Orders Hearing on CIA Tape Destruction

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The New York Sun

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has ordered a hearing on whether the Bush administration violated a court order by destroying CIA interrogation videos of terror suspects.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy rejected calls from the Justice Department to stay out of the matter. He ordered lawyers to appear before him Friday morning.

In June 2005, Judge Kennedy ordered the administration to safeguard “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay.”

Five months later, the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos. The recordings involved the suspected terrorists, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The Justice Department argued that the videos weren’t covered by the order because the two men were being held in secret CIA prisons overseas, not at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

A lawyer who represents a Yemeni national and other detainees, David Remes, asked for the court hearing. He said the government was obligated to keep the tapes and he wants to be sure other evidence is not being destroyed.

The Justice Department and CIA are investigating the destruction of the tapes and have urged Congress and the courts to give them space and time to let them investigate.

Mr. Remes urged Judge Kennedy not to comply.

“Plainly the government wants only foxes guarding this henhouse,” Mr. Remes wrote in court documents this week.

Judge Kennedy did not say why he was ordering the hearing or what he planned to ask. Even if the judge accepts the argument that government did not violate his order, he still could raise questions about obstruction or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in “pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation.”


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