MOSCOW, December 13 - RAPSI. Information relating to the capture, detention, and interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and four of his alleged 9/11 co-conspirators will remain under wraps in accordance with a protective order issued by Guantanamo Military Judge James L. Pohl which was unsealed Wednesday.

As explained by Pohl, “this case involves classified national security information… the disclosure of which would be detrimental to national security, the storage, handling, and control of which requires special security precautions, and the access to which requires a security clearance and a need-to-know.”

Among the list of documents and information sought to be protected by the order are any relating to the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were used against the defendants any time between their approximate dates of capture through September 6, 2006. This extends to such information as, “the duration, frequency, sequencing, and limitations of these techniques.”

Other documents and information protected by the order include details of the defendants’ captures, other than location and date; foreign countries that the defendants were detained in between capture and September 6, 2006; information that could be used to identify individuals involved in the defendants’ captures; descriptions of confinement conditions through September 6, 2006; and any “observations and experiences” of the defendants with respect to any of these matters.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a motion with the military commission in May challenging the use in court of audio-delay technology based on the argument that American citizens have rights based on the First Amendment of the US Constitution to hear testimony relating to the defendants’ alleged torture.

Judge Pohl upheld the audio delay in the protective order.

After the order was released, ACLU National Security Program Director Hina Shamsi said in a press statement, “We’re profoundly disappointed by the military judge’s decision, which didn’t even address the serious First Amendment issues at stake here. The government wanted to ensure that the American public would never hear the defendants’ accounts of illegal CIA torture, rendition and detention, and the military judge has gone along with that shameful plan… For now, the most important terrorism trial of our time will be organized around judicially approved censorship of the defendants’ own thoughts, experiences and memories of CIA torture. The decision undermines the government’s claim that the military commission system is transparent and deals a grave blow to its legitimacy.”