US News
Interrogation techniques at CIA prisons must stay secret: US
By DPA
Nov 4, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - The US government has alleged prisoners at secret CIA prisons must never be able to talk about the interrogation methods used on them - even to their lawyers, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

In a court filing in which the government seeks to block lawyers' access to a high-profile detainee, it calls the interrogation techniques national security secrets that 'could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage,' the report said.

A lawyer at a firm that represents many prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has sought to receive access to Majid Khan, who was transferred to Guantanamo along with 14 other prisoners from secret sites in September.

But the government has tried to keep that from happening, and in documents filed in a US court last week expressed concern that allowing prisoners who had been held at CIA prisons to have contact with lawyers would jeopardize the secrecy of the interrogation techniques used on them.

A CIA official writes in the court filing that allowing the prisoners access to the lawyers 'poses an unacceptable risk of disclosure.'

A lawyer for Khan's family said the government was 'attempting to misuse its classification authority' by claiming that all of the detainees' experiences were top-secret and could not be discussed.

US President George W Bush insists the CIA programme has been essential to fighting terrorism since the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

Since the attacks, the CIA had held dozens of suspects at secret locations around the world. Among them are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the plot's alleged mastermind, and suspected top al-Qaeda operatives Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah.

Bush announced in September that detainees held for years in CIA custody had been transferred to the US military base at Guantanamo to face prosecution.