The government argued that by talking about what had happened to them, the CIA’s former prisoners, who are now detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, would risk revealing classified information about the agency’s torture program.
But as James Connell, a lawyer who represents detainee Ammar al Baluchi, wrote more than three years ago in a motion to declassify the prisoners' accounts, "A person's own experiences -- whether the smell of a rose or the click of a gun near one's head -- are what make them a person, and the government can never own or control them."
The notion that a torture survivor's memories can be classified, Connell wrote, "contravenes the most basic principles of human rights." He added that detainees "were exposed to classified interrogation techniques only in the sense that Hiroshima was exposed to the classified Manhattan Project."
Now, the government is starting to change course.
It seems to me that in cases where classification prevents a defense - the defense should prevail by default.
Aside from that, the fact they were tortured at all is sufficient in my mind, and that has been established beyond reasonable doubt. The wrong people are on trial here.