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| Judge expands on rights of Guantanamo inmates |
| By Knight Ridder News Service |
| Published: 10/25/2004 |
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A federal judge ruled last Wednesday that Guantanamo detainees have the right to meet with lawyers - without military intelligence eavesdropping. It was the latest in a slow but steady and systematic intervention by civilian judges into the rights of so-called enemy combatants, a domain that the Bush administration maintains is a strictly military matter. Moreover, the decision addressing the rights of three prisoners who took their cases to the U.S. Supreme Court includes a tantalizing tidbit in a factual footnote: U.S. military intelligence believes one of the Kuwaiti men in custody in Cuba may have been Osama bin Laden's spiritual adviser. He is identified as Mohammed Ahmed al-Kandari, who in June won the right to challenge his detention in civilian courts. He has been held by the United States for nearly three years, but not charged with any crime. In her decision, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejected a Defense Department argument that military intelligence could spy on lawyer-client conversations and review civilian lawyers' notes of their meetings with the alleged terrorists to gather intelligence on terrorism. The judge, who presides in Washington, D.C., called lawyer-client privacy a "bedrock principle." The Defense Department was reviewing the decision. Michael Ratner of the New York Center for Constitutional Rights and other lawyers sued the government after prison commanders said they would monitor the conversations between prisoners and three clients, including al- Kandari. |
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