Kanishka Sharma

(Reuters] – U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration told the Supreme Court that a high ranking al Qaeda figure, suspected to be high up, was held at Guantanamo bay, Cuba. He could give limited testimony regarding his torture by the CIA.

Earlier in the month, the U.S. Supreme Court Justices questioned the U.S. government’s refusal to allow Abu Zubaydah to testify.

Zubaydah was a Palestinian prisoner captured by Pakistani authorities in 2002. He has been held indefinitely in the United States without charge.

Responding to three questions during oral arguments this month, Acting solicitor General Brian Fletcher sent a Friday letter to court informing them that Zubaydah might provide a declaration to the case pending.

Fletcher, in a letter to Reuters, wrote that Abu Zubaydah would be allowed to submit a declaration upon request. This could then be sent to the Polish investigation.

But he said any information that might be “defensible to the security interests” of the United States could be redacted.

Poland is thought to have been the site of a “blacksite” where Zubaydah was interrogated harshly by the CIA.

Zubaydah (now 50) has lived at Guantanamo 15 years and is still being held there. U.S. government papers showed that Zubaydah, now 50 years old, lost his eye after which he was waterboarded 83 times.

A Justice Department filing stated that he was “an associate terrorist ally of Osama bel Laden” and the leader al Qaeda Islamist militants who were killed by U.S. troops in Pakistan in 2011.

Fletcher wrote in his letter that Zubaydah’s testimony wouldn’t resolve the dispute currently before the justices about the scope and use of the “state secret” privilege. This legal doctrine allows government information to be protected that may pose a threat to national security.