Guantanamo Bay hearing on CIA black sites held in secret session

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — A military judge held a secret war court session Saturday on defense lawyers’ efforts to uncover evidence of what the CIA did to the alleged USS Cole bomber across years in the agency’s clandestine overseas prison network.

Both the public and the alleged terrorist were excluded from the 111-minute hearing in the case that seeks the execution of Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri as mastermind of the Oct. 12, 2000, terror attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors off Aden, Yemen.

Only prosecutors and defense lawyers attended the hearing with the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, and a court recorder creating a classified transcript of the proceedings.

Nashiri, 49, spent four years in secret CIA prisons where, according to declassified reports, agents waterboarded him and interrogated him nude with a hood on his head and handcuffs on his wrists. One U.S. agent threatened to kill the Saudi with a power drill and handgun, and threatened to have his mother raped.

At issue Saturday, according to the judge’s closure order, was some aspect of a sweeping motion by Nashiri’s lawyers that seeks a list of the places where the CIA kept Nashiri from 2002 to 2006. It also seeks details of his interrogations; the names of the agents and other staff at the CIA prisons, including medical personnel; blood and saliva tests conducted on him and drugs given to him; and White House memos on the secret program.

A proposed trial date is Sept. 2.