Feds Battle to Keep Rendition Case Under Wraps

The Obama administration is fighting to keep details secret in the case of a former Guantanamo detainee who says he was tortured, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. A San Francisco court has ruled Binyam Mohamed and four others can sue the company they allege flew them to secret CIA prisons—but the government has asked it to reconsider on the grounds of national security.

Mohamed, a British resident freed without charge after seven years in US custody, says he was tortured in a secret prison in Morocco and at a US base in Afghanistan before being sent to Guantanamo. His lawyers have been threatened with jail on contempt of court charges for writing a letter to President Obama asking him to release the evidence of their client's treatment. A British lawyer testified last month that Hillary Clinton threatened to halt intelligence-sharing with Britain if that country's High Court disclosed details of the case. (More Binyam Mohamed stories.)