U.S. battling CIA rendition case in 3 courts

The Obama administration is fighting on multiple fronts - in courts in San Francisco, WashingtonLondon - to keep an official veil of secrecy over the treatment of a former prisoner who says he was tortured at Guantanamo Bay. and

The administration has asked a federal appeals court in San Francisco to reconsider its ruling allowing Binyam Mohamed and four other former or current prisoners to sue a Bay Area company for allegedly flying them to overseas torture chambers for the CIA.

Obama administration lawyers also argued that Mohamed's attorneys had violated secrecy procedures by writing a letter to President Obama, accompanied by a blacked-out document, asking him to disclose their client's treatment. A federal judge ordered Mohamed's lawyers to answer contempt-of-court charges in May that were punishable by up to six months in jail, but has since dropped those charges.

Most recently, a British government lawyer told her nation's High Court last month that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had threatened to limit U.S. intelligence-sharing with Great Britain if the court disclosed details of Mohamed's treatment in Guantanamo.

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