Judge Wants Answers on CIA Videotapes

[cal04]

Source: Associated Press

A federal judge said Thursday that CIA interrogation videotapes may have been relevant to his court case and he gave the Bush administration three weeks to explain why they were destroyed in 2005 and say whether other evidence was also destroyed.

Several judges are considering wading into the dispute over the videos, but U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts was the first to order the administration to provide a written report on the matter.

The tapes showed harsh interrogation tactics used by CIA officers questioning al-Qaida suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2002. The Justice Department and Congress are investigating the destruction of the tapes.

(snip)
Roberts issued a three-page ruling late Thursday siding with lawyers for a Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo Bay. The judge said the lawyers had made a preliminary "showing that information obtained from Abu Zubaydah" was relevant to the detainee's lawsuit and should not have been destroyed.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080124/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_videotapes_3

[babylonsister]

1. Good for the judge! Now they have 3 weeks to figure out their

strategery.

[gratuitous]

2. And in three weeks, the administration will definitively report

That they need an additional six months to comply with the court's order. Or that the reason they can't report has to do with national security (with appropriately frowny faces and scary vocal intonations), and that it's really none of the court's business.

Either way, we'll never get that report, and nobody will be held in contempt for defying the court's order.

[fascisthunter]

3. What a Joke....

[bleever]

4. Maybe Cheney's failure was taking "Reagan proved deficits don't matter",

and thinking that maybe the judiciary doesn't matter.

He underestimated the first, and woefully and tragically misunderstood the second.