By Lawrence Hurley
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that two former CIA contractors cannot be questioned in a criminal investigation in Poland over their role in interrogating Abu Zubaydah, a suspected high-ranking al Qaeda figure who was repeatedly subjected to waterboarding.
The justices concluded that Central Intelligence Agency contractors James Elmer Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen cannot be subpoenaed under a U.S. law that allows federal courts to enforce a request for testimony or other evidence for a foreign legal proceeding.
The court found that the government could assert what is known as the “state-secrets privilege” to prevent the contractors from being questioned, saying it would risk national security.
The contractors’ testimony “would be tantamount to a disclosure from the CIA itself,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the majority opinion.
The Polish investigation concerns the treatment of Zubaydah, who remains held at the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Zubaydah, a Palestinian man captured in 2002 in Pakistan and held by the United States since then without charges, repeatedly underwent waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning widely considered torture.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
