WASHINGTON -- The military must give men imprisoned at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, speedy access to their lawyers and cannot monitor their conversations with the lawyers, a federal judge ordered yesterday.
Lawyers file arguments on behalf of enemy combatant. A24.
In a scolding opinion expected to aid other detainees who argue that they have been unfairly imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejected the government's claim that it needs to monitor all conversations, notes, and mail between lawyers and three detainee clients to protect the nation from future terrorist attacks.
For now, Kollar-Kotelly's ruling covers only three Kuwaitis held for nearly three years at the prison.
But it also deals a blow to the Bush administration's position that it can dictate access rules to the 68 alleged Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters who have demanded that the government justify their imprisonment or release them.
Kollar-Kotelly's decision came in a lawsuit, filed two years ago, by 12 Kuwaiti nationals, three of whom are scheduled to meet their lawyers in the near future.
But her 20-page conclusion is a strong signal to other judges presiding over detainees' claims that are still wending their way through the federal court in Washington.
Kollar-Kotelly wrote that the Supreme Court clearly ruled this summer that the more than 500 Guantanamo detainees, all foreign nationals, have the right to challenge their imprisonment before US courts. She concluded that the high court ruling means they must have access to US lawyers, a position the government had fought.
The judge also wrote that allowing lawyers and their clients to speak privately is virtually guaranteed in the US court system. She said government claims that the president can limit those rights because of fears that the detainees will pass along or gain information threatening national security is ''thinly supported."
Lawyers for detainees applauded the ruling, saying it upholds a fundamental principle of the legal system and affirmed the Supreme Court's June ruling. ''It's a great decision for the detainees and for this country . . . the judge is saying people have a right to counsel without the government being in the room with you," said Michael Ratner, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed petitions for many of the detainees this summer.
Major Michael Shavers, the Pentagon spokesman, said the Defense Department and its lawyers at the Justice Department need some time to review the opinion before deciding whether to appeal.
Brigadier General Martin Lucenti, acting commander of the military task force that runs the prison at Guantanamo Bay, has told the court in written filings that the three Kuwaitis have strong connections to Al Qaeda and may try to use their conversations with their lawyers to obtain secret information about American vulnerabilities and relay messages to terrorist cells.
Lucenti said that one of the detainees, Mohammed al Kandari, ''may have served as a spiritual advisor to Osama bin Laden"; Fawzi al Odah has ''admitted to having Taliban connections and has admitted to being a member of Al Qaeda"; Khalid al Mutairi ''has expressed his anti-American views and his desire to engage in terrorist and other violent activity."
But Kollar-Kotelly wrote that rules set by the court governing meetings between lawyers and detainees address the risk to national security. The lawyers for the detainees must obtain security clearances to visit their clients at the Cuba base, and they must get court approval to share information from their clients with the detainees' relatives or other lawyers.
The judge wrote that a government that spies on the essential, confidential relationship between a lawyer and client ''would lay waste to the value of attorney-client privilege. . . . The government attempts to erode this bedrock principle with a flimsy assemblage of cases and one regulation."