A lawyer for a man accused of helping to plot the 9/11 attacks said today his captive Saudi client was rectally abused while in CIA custody, "and continues to bleed now, at least eight years later." He and other men were forced to submit to rectal exams with excessive force, conducted by CIA operatives. The other words for this are rape, or sodomy.

From Miami Herald correspondent Carol Rosenberg's report:

Attorney Walter Ruiz made the disclosure in open court in a bid to get a military judge to intervene in the medical care of Mustafa Hawsawi, 46, accused of helping the Sept. 11 hijackers with travel and money.

He was captured in March 2003 with the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, 49, and at the CIA's secret prison was subjected to unauthorized "enhanced interrogation techniques," according to the recently released so-called Senate Torture Report. He got to Guantánamo in September 2006.

The slight 5-foot-4-inch man has sat on a pillow across years of pretrial hearings in the death-penalty trial of five men accused of conspiring in the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001. Thursday was the first time that Ruiz was permitted to explain it under a loosening of censorship at the court that lets lawyers talk about the released, redacted 524-page portion of the 6,200-page report.