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U.S. judge demands hearing on CIA tapes

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration must answer questions about the destruction of CIA interrogation videos of two al-Qaida suspects, a federal judge said Tuesday, rejecting the government's efforts to keep the courts out of the investigation.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy ordered Justice Department lawyers to appear before him Friday at 11 a.m. to discuss whether destroying the tapes, which showed two al-Qaida suspects being questioned, violated a court order.

The Justice Department had no comment on Kennedy's decision to hold a hearing. The department has urged Congress and the courts to back off, saying its investigators need time to complete their own inquiry. Government attorneys say the courts don't have the authority to get involved in the matter and could jeopardize the case.

For now, at least, Kennedy disagrees.

In June 2005, Kennedy ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

Five months later, the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos. The recordings involved suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The Justice Department argued that the videos weren't covered by the order because the two men were being held in secret CIA prisons overseas, not at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

Kennedy did not say why he was ordering the hearing or what he planned to ask. Even if the judge accepts the argument that the government did not violate his order, he still could raise questions about obstruction or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in "pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation."

Attorneys in unrelated cases, meanwhile, are pressing other judges to demand information about the tapes.

Lawyers for a man convicted of terrorism charges alongside Jose Padilla asked a federal judge Tuesday in Miami to force the government to turn over any remaining evidence regarding Zubaydah's interrogation. Prosecutors have acknowledged that Zubaydah provided information identifying Padilla as an al-Qaida operative working on a purported "dirty bomb" plot. Lawyer Ken Swartz said information about his client, convicted terrorism supporter Adham Amin Hassoun, might be found in those interrogations.

And Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice, a lawyer for a Guantanamo Bay detainee, asked U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in Washington to schedule a hearing. Kessler filed an order in July 2005 that was almost identical to Kennedy's, and Hafetz says he worries key evidence was destroyed.

[Last modified December 19, 2007, 01:29:19]