Judge Orders U.S. to Make Public Overseas Prison Records

[2Design]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=nm/rights_detainees_dc

By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government must provide within 30 days documents relating to the treatment of prisoners held at American detention centers overseas, including Iraq (news - web sites)'s Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, a federal judge ordered on Wednesday.



More than 17,000 pages of documents have been requested by the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) and other groups, which argued that the government must release the records under the Freedom of Information Act.

Manhattan Federal Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein said the government has responded at a "glacial pace" to requests for the documents, first made in October 2003.

"If the documents are more of an embarrassment than a secret, the public should know of our government's treatment of individuals captured and held abroad," he said.

<snip>