American Civil Liberties Union : Documents Released by Defense Department Regarding Solitary Military Detention

There has never been a more urgent need to preserve fundamental privacy protections and our system of checks and balances than the need we face today, as illegal government spying and government-sponsored torture programs transcend the bounds of law in the name of national security. Learn more about ACLU's National Security Project (NSP), which advocates for national security policies that are consistent with the Constitution, the rule of law, and fundamental human rights.

Documents Released by Defense Department Regarding Solitary Military Detention (10/6/2008)

Although a great deal is now known about the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib, little has been asked - and less revealed - about the years of solitary military detention and interrogation without trial at naval brigs in Virginia and South Carolina endured by two U.S. citizens and a legal resident - Yaser Hamdi, Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri.

Documents obtained by the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School and the American Civil Liberties Union from the United States Fleet Forces Command pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act suggest that there may not have been much difference between detention inside and outside the U.S. because: (1) the brigs were ordered to follow the standard operating procedures developed for Guantanamo Bay; and (2) interrogations at the brigs, like interrogations on Guantanamo, were conducted by the CIA and a component of the Defense Intelligence Agency known by the acronym "DHS," around the same time that the same agencies were conducting interrogations at Guantánamo.

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