The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case that could reveal new details about CIA detention facilities in foreign countries.
Last year, the Trump administration urged the Supreme Court to review a 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision that rejected the government’s request to keep secret certain details of the CIA’s activity, including the location of former CIA detention facilities. On Monday, the justices agreed to hear that case.
At issue is information that former al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah wants to obtain but which the U.S. government says is classified. Zubaydah was captured after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and is detained in Guantanamo Bay.
Zubaydah claims he was unlawfully detained in Poland between 2002 and 2003 and his attorneys told the Supreme Court in February 2021 that he is seeking “non-privileged information that could aid Polish prosecutors.”
The Biden administration told the Supreme Court in March 2021 that the information Zubaydah wants is classified and “would be used exclusively in a foreign proceeding considering wholly foreign legal obligations outside the supervisory power of the federal judiciary, and where the very purpose of that proceeding is to investigate alleged clandestine activities of the CIA abroad.”
Zubaydah was captured in 2002 and the Biden administration has described him as a “terrorist facilitator” who ran a terrorist training camp and was connected to Osama bin Laden.
No date has yet been set for arguments in Zubaydah‘s case.
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