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Earlier this month, President Barack Obama declined the request but did make the full report a presidential record. | AP Photo Judge orders preservation of ‘torture report’

A federal judge has ordered the government to preserve a Senate report documenting alleged abuse and mistreatment of detainees in CIA custody, potentially opening another avenue for the eventual declassification and public release of the unabridged report.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth issued the order Wednesday at the request of lawyers for Abd al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, who was subjected to waterboarding while in CIA custody and now faces military commission charges of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

Lamberth also ordered the preservation of the CIA response to the report and all documents mentioned in the report.

The judge did not offer a detailed rationale for his ruling, saying simply that he was ordering the report preserved for the reasons advanced by Al-Nashiri’s attorneys.

Several lawmakers asked President Barack Obama in recent months to incorporate the full, nearly 7,000-page report into the records of federal agencies and to order its declassification. Earlier this month, he declined that request but did make the full report a presidential record, which could ease release of the report eventually, but most likely not for a decade or more.

Lamberth ordered that the report be deposited with a court security officer, which raises the possibility it could eventually be released as a court record. For now, however, it will be treated as “top secret” and kept in a secure space.