Zadran v. Bush

• Court: District Court, District of Columbia
• Decided: February 6, 2012
• Docket: Civil Action No. 2005-2367
• Status: Published

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ______________________________ ) ABDULLAH WAZIR ZADRAN, ) et al., ) ) Petitioners, ) ) v. ) Civil Action No. 05-2367 (RWR) ) BARACK H. OBAMA et al., ) ) Respondents. ) ______________________________)

ORDER

The May 12, 2011 order issued by Judge Hogan granted the

government’s motion to designate as protected under the

Protective Order governing the Guantánamo Bay detainee litigation

“sensitive but unclassified information falling within one of the

following six categories”:

1. Names and/or other information that would tend to identify certain U.S. government employees, FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force members, or contractors — specifically, law enforcement officers, agents, translators, intelligence analysts, or interrogators, all below the Senior Exectuive Service or General Officer level — [or] the family members of detainees.

2. Information that would reveal the existence, focus, or scope of law enforcement or intelligence operations, including the sources, witnesses, or methods used and the identity of persons of interest.

3. Information indicating the names or locations, including geo-coordinates, of locations of interest as they pertain to counter-terrorism intelligence gathering, law enforcement, or military operations, where the Government has not previously acknowledged [publicly] its knowledge of those names or locations. -2-

4. Information that would reveal the Government’s knowledge of telephone numbers, websites, passwords, passcodes, and e-mail addresses used by known or suspected terrorists, or discussions of the manner in which known or suspected terrorists use these methods for communications with one another.

5. Information regarding the use, effectiveness, or details regarding the implementation of certain interrogation approaches and techniques approved by Executive Order 13491 and described in the Army Field Manual No. 2-22.3.

6. Certain administrative data, operational “nicknames,” code words, dates of acquisition, including dates of interrogations, and FBI case names and file numbers, contained in the intelligence documents included in the factual returns.

In re Guantánamo Bay Detainee Litig., 787 F. Supp. 2d 5, 8

(D.D.C. 2011). The respondents have filed an unopposed motion to

deem protected information highlighted in the proposed public

factual return for petitioner Abdul Haq. Upon review of the

material submitted by the respondents, and in light of the

petitioner’s consent, it is hereby

ORDERED that the respondents’ motion [377] to deem as

protected the material highlighted in the accompanying proposed

public factual return be, and hereby is, GRANTED, and the

information identified by the respondents with gray and green

highlighting in the version of the factual return submitted under

seal is deemed protected under paragraphs 10 and 34 of the

Protective Order governing the Guantánamo Bay detainee

litigation. It is further -3-

ORDERED that the parties confer and agree upon a properly

redacted version of this factual return that addresses and

resolves all the concerns of the parties, and that the parties

agree can be filed on the public docket. Respondents shall file

that version by March 9, 2012.

SIGNED this 6th day of February, 2012.

/s/ RICHARD W. ROBERTS United States District Judge