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Rights Groups File Motion to Compel Department of Justice to Release Documents on U.S. Secret Detention, Rendition, and Torture Program

Thursday, July 24, 2008
Posted in Human Rights | Tagged Human Rights

(New York and Washington, DC)-The Department of Justice (DOJ) must stop its stonewalling tactics and produce documents related to the U.S. government’s ghost detention, torture, and extraordinary rendition program, three prominent human rights groups urged today, just after collectively filing a motion to require the DOJ to make certain information public. The motion also seeks to compel the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to process the groups’ request for particular documents.

“We know that lawyers have been intimately involved in justifying torture and disappearance by the U.S. government,” said Gita Gutierrez, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). “It is past time for the DOJ to stop hiding these documents and present this information to the public.”

The groups-Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), CCR, and the International Human Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (NYU IHRC/CHRGJ)-filed a motion for preliminary injunction on July 19, 2008 in the Southern District of New York, where the case is being heard. The lawsuit was filed in June 2007 under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), after repeated attempts to obtain information from the DOJ and other agencies had failed.

“The more the DOJ stalls in admitting its role in the rendition, disappearances, and torture program, the more obvious it becomes that it has greatly contributed to the illegality that has come to define this administration over the past seven years,” said Jayne Huckerby, Research Director of the CHRGJ.

Since 2004 and 2006, AIUSA, CCR, and NYU IHRC have filed FOIA requests with several U.S. government agencies, including the DOJ, the CIA, and the Department of Homeland Security, seeking information about the government program of secret or irregular detention.

“Amnesty International’s global experience has shown us time and time again that abuse thrives in secrecy and darkness,” said Curt Goering, AIUSA’s senior deputy executive director. “The U.S. public has both an urgent interest and a right to know what has been done-legally and illegally-under the guise of ‘national security.’ The real threat to national security is the total lack of accountability we are seeing in the DOJ and other government agencies that were created to defend democratic principles of justice, not destroy them.”

For more information or copies of the legal filings, please contact gfitzgerald@aiusa.org, groth@gloverparkgroup.com, or opgenhaffen@juris.law.nyu.edu.

For more information about the organizations involved, please see their websites: www.amnestyusa.org, www.ccrjustice.org, or www.chrgj.org.

To see the most recent documents from this case, as well as the prior filings and the documents previously released through this litigation, see: http://www.chrgj.org/#foia.

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