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July 24, 2005
US attorney ignores US court order?
That's a new one. Well, at least no one has officially declared marshall law and announced that the FOIA is null and void, yet.
Lawyers for the Defense Department are refusing to cooperate with a federal judge's order to release secret photographs and videotapes related to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.The lawyers said in a letter sent to the federal court in Manhattan late Thursday that they would file a sealed brief explaining their reasons for not turning over the material, which they were to have released by Friday.
The photographs were some of thousands turned over by Spc. Joseph Darby, the whistle-blower who exposed the abuse at Abu Ghraib by giving investigators computer disks containing photographs and videos of prisoners being abused, sexually humiliated and threatened with dogs.
The small number of the photographs released in spring 2004 provoked international outrage at the American military.
In early June, Judge Alvin Hellerstein of U.S. District Court in Manhattan ordered the release of the additional photographs, part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to determine the extent of abuse at American military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The ACLU said sealed documents the government filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan would be used to argue that dozens of photographs could not be released because they would result in a safety threat to individuals."We obviously express skepticism about the latest move on the government's part to withhold information the public is clearly entitled to," said Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff lawyer.
The government raised its new challenge to releasing pictures and videos from Abu Ghraib prison on the same day it was supposed to show the exhibits to a judge presiding over the case, the ACLU said.
Sean H. Lane, the government lawyer handling the case, referred questions to Herbert Haddad, a spokesman for U.S. Atty. David N. Kelley.
Haddad said the government did file papers in the case under seal, and said he could not discuss their contents.
Posted by Mike at July 24, 2005 12:29 AM
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