Court upholds prisoner secrecy

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the government can keep secret the identities of detainees who say they’ve been abused at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan reversed a lower court judge’s ruling regarding eight files containing records documenting allegations of detainee abuse by military personnel, as well as documents containing reports of allegations of detainee-against-detainee abuse.

The misconduct alleged to have been carried out by military personnel included spraying detainees with water hoses, striking them, using pepper spray against them and splashing them with cleaning products.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court found that the detainees and their families have a privacy interest in their identifying information. The government had argued that the detainees faced possible harm if their identities were revealed.

The appeals court said that the Associated Press, which sought the identities, had not shown how disclosure would serve the public interest.

The appeals court said abuse is the type of information people would ordinarily not wish to have made known, so abuse victims were entitled to privacy protection.

“Certainly they have an interest in both keeping the personal facts of their abuse from the public eye and in avoiding disclosure of their identities in order to prevent embarrassment,” it said.

The court wrote that it didn’t want to suggest that detainees could be prevented from coming forward with such allegations, nor did it want this privacy interest to be used by the government to maintain a “veil of administrative secrecy” around Guantanamo.

The ruling “does not give the government a blank check to keep such information from the public eye,” the court said.

AP attorney David A. Schulz called the ruling troubling because of the high burden it places for those who seek information from the government. He didn’t say whether it would be appealed.

Government spokeswoman Rebekah Carmichael declined to comment on the decision.