Firedog Lake - A federal judge has ordered the government to unseal twenty-eight previously classified videos of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner being force-fed and forcibly extracted from his cell for forced-feedings.
... Judge Gladys Kessler of the US District Court of the District of Columbia granted the motion and ordered the government to unseal the video with “all identifiers of individuals in the videotapes censored.
“The court is well aware, as the Government has emphasized, that in no case involving Guantanamo Bay detainees has any court ordered disclosure of classified information over the Government’s opposition,” Kessler states . “However—to be clear—that does not mean that in a given factual situation no court has the discretion to do so if warranted. Quite the contrary. Our Court of Appeals has stated that it is the judiciary’s responsibility, when ruling on an issue as overwhelmingly important as diminution of our precious First Amendment rights, to ensure that classification of the items in question, i.e., the FCE videos is proper.”
Her decision represents a stunning and refreshingly bold rebuke of all the global security state’s most pernicious secrecy arguments.
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