January 25, 2008
Judge Demands a Report on Destroyed C.I.A. Tapes
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON -- A judge on Thursday gave the Justice Department three weeks to report in writing whether the destruction of C.I.A. videotapes in November 2005 violated an order he issued four months earlier to preserve evidence.
The new order, issued by Judge Richard W. Roberts of the Federal District Court in Washington, is the first to require the Bush administration to provide information related to the videotapes' destruction, which is under criminal investigation. The tapes showed harsh interrogation of two high-level Qaeda suspects, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
Judge Roberts's order came in the case of Hani Saleh Rashid Abdullah, a Yemeni electrician who is challenging his imprisonment at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Mr. Abdullah's lawyers say that because he is accused of having ties to Al Qaeda, it is likely that Mr. Zubaydah was asked about him during his interrogation. If so, they argue, the videotapes should have been preserved under Judge Roberts's July 2005 order to ''preserve and maintain all evidence'' regarding Mr. Abdullah and several other Guantánamo prisoners.
A copy of the 2005 preservation order was sent at the time to Porter J. Goss, who was then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, by a lawyer for one of the detainees.
In his order Thursday, Judge Roberts called ''colorable,'' or plausible, the claim that evidence from Mr. Zubaydah was relevant to Mr. Abdullah's case. He directed the government to file a written report by Feb. 14 describing ''the nature of any evidence potentially subject to the protective order that has been destroyed.''
Erik Ablin, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said he had no comment.