SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court hearing the case of a Guantanamo Bay inmate detained after the 9-11 attacks and subjected to brutal treatment by the CIA took the rare step of calling “enhanced interrogation techniques” torture.
The Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco made the statement in a ruling allowing Abu Zubaydah’s lawyers to question two former CIA contractors on how the Palestinian man “was tortured.”
Joseph Margulies, who represented Zubaydah for more than a decade, tells the San Francisco Chronicle the ruling is a milestone.
The appeals court said in the 2-1 ruling issued Wednesday that Zubaydah’s lawyers could question the American psychologists that designed the CIA’s interrogation program for an investigation in Poland, where Zubaydah was held from December 2002 to September 2003.
The Associated Press
