New York – Just days after a federal appeals court issued an interim order requiring the government to preserve evidence of Guantanamo detainee Majid Khan’s torture by the CIA, a second motion filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) was declassified in redacted form today. The new motion asks the Court of Appeals to declare that the interrogation methods applied against the 27-year-old former Baltimore resident by U.S. personnel “constitute torture and other forms of impermissible coercion.”

The government’s response to the motion is due to the court on December 20.

“Majid Khan was subjected by U.S. personnel to a ruthless program of state-sanctioned torture,” said CCR Attorney Wells Dixon. “This motion will require the government to state its position for the first time in front of a real court as to whether they think the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used on Majid are torture under U.S. and international law.” CCR’s reply brief is due January 4, 2008.

Dixon and fellow CCR attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez brought the motions on behalf of their client, Majid Khan, who was taken from Pakistan in 2003, and spent three and half years in secret CIA prisons before “reappearing” at Guantanamo in September 2006.  

Both declassified filings are available in heavily redacted form below.

This development comes just over a week after the Supreme Court heard arguments in a landmark case on detainee rights. In the case – aimed at reining in executive power and restoring constitutional rights – CCR attorneys and co-counsel are asking the justices to rule that Guantanamo detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus – the right to appear before an independent court to know why they are being held and what the charges are against them.