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The war crimes of the Bush-Cheney regime in terms of CIA torture and rendition have become clearer recently as NPR reports this morning about what has been a legal quagmire since imprisonment at Gitmo began.
This latest chapter began when the military commission at Guantanamo held a hearing earlier this month in the case of five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks — a case that's been stuck for nearly three years in pre-trial wrangling.
It was the first time the court had met since a summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's interrogation and detention of suspected terrorists was made public late last year.
What many call "the torture report" is no longer a government secret, so lawyers for the defendants can now talk in court about what was done to their clients.
The change was readily apparent to observers who've followed this capital case.
Year after year in the Guantanamo courtroom, defendant Mustafa al-Hawsawi had always sat on a chair with an extra seat cushion. Reporters and others sitting a few feet away in the gallery wondered why the extra cushion.
The answer came when al-Hawsawi's lawyer rose to inform the military judge that his client suffers from chronic bleeding. Defense attorney Walter Ruiz, who is a commander in the Navy Reserve, said his client had been held by the CIA and subjected to what he called "sodomy."