WASHINGTON, Dec 13: A Pakistani prisoner at Guantanamo Bay won a major legal battle when a US federal court in Washington directed the Bush administration to preserve any evidence that might show he was tortured by the CIA.

Majid Khan, 27, who has been in US custody for the last three years, claimed he was tortured by CIA agents sent to interrogate him. He is a Pakistani national but lived in the US as a legal resident on a green card. Khan is among 15 high-value detainees once held by the CIA but now in military custody at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

The order, by a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, gave the US government until Dec 20 to respond to Khan’s accusations.

Khan’s lawyers requested the court action last week.

Also last week, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden acknowledged that the agency had destroyed videotapes of the interrogations of two other Guantan-amo detainees who, like Khan, had spent years in secret CIA custody.

Khan, who was a legal US resident and graduated from a high school in Baltimore, was captured in Pakistan in March 2003. He has not been charged with a crime.