The Bush government's effort to prosecute foreign detainees with secret military tribunals makes little sense in terms of vital operational details being communicated. These people had been jailed for years already, and "harsh interrogation" (torture) had supposedly extracted the useful information they might have had.
The secrecy was rather to protect the government from criticism for conducting torture. The tribunal for prisoner Majid Khan raised the claim (link here; page 13) that the 6 & 8 year old children of prisoner Khalid S. Mohammed were kept without food or water & tormented with insects for information about their father. Recent disclosures allowing insect-related torments make this hearsay story more believable...
Torturing or harming those known to be innocent, and collective punishment, are bad policy and cannot be excused.