Claims of Torture Abroad Face Test Monday in Court
Binyam Mohamed, one of five detainees suing a subsidiary of the Boeing Company.
The hearing grows out of a lawsuit filed on behalf of an Ethiopian native,Binyam Mohamed, and four other detainees against a subsidiary of the Boeing Company. The suit maintains that the subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan, helped arrange rendition flights that took the detainees to nations where, they say, they were tortured.
The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in the Federal District Court in San Francisco in May 2007. It was dismissed last February after the Bush administration asserted the "state secrets privilege," claiming that the disclosure of information in the case could damage national security.
In the appeal, to be heard Monday by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the civil liberties union argues that the government has engaged in an inappropriate blanket use of the privilege and that the case should be allowed to proceed.
"Every single torture case filed against a U.S. official has been thrown out without any adjudication of law or facts" because of the early and broad use of the state secrets privilege, said Ben Wizner, an A.C.L.U. lawyer.
The practical effect, Mr. Wizner said, is that detainees are blocked from the courts, and so "there aren't any checks and balances over the conduct."
In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U., noted that as a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama pledged to break with the past on the issues of rendition and torture. His Justice Department, however, has not yet signaled whether it will continue to assert the broad state secrets claim, alter it or simply ask for more time to consider its options.
"The baton has been passed," Mr. Romero said. "The runner must run in the same direction or change course."
A spokesman for the Justice Department, Charles Miller, declined to comment on the case, as did a White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt.
But whatever the government's lawyer says on Monday will speak volumes about the administration's views, Mr. Wizner said.
"If he repeats the Bush administration's argument that this case must be dismissed at the outset," Mr.Wizner said, "then we'll know that despite the change of administration, the policy of the United States that torture victims be shut out of the courtroom has continued."
