Left bummed that Ghailani trial didn’t become an anti-torture soapbox

“At times,” said Ben Wizner, litigation director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, “it seemed like the only forum in which we might have an airing of the legal consequences of torture was in criminal cases against the detainees, but obviously that didn’t happen here.”…

Peter E. Quijano, one of Mr. Ghailani’s lawyers, said on Thursday that when he was appointed to the case in June 2009, “One of the first things that I thought was that I’d have the opportunity to expose exactly what was done to detainees by this country at black sites.

“However, that was quickly removed from consideration,” he said, “once the government made the determination that it would not use” the statements Mr. Ghailani had made during his nearly five years of detention by the C.I.A. and the military.