Bush administration seeks secrecy for Supreme Court proceedings

The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court to let it keep its arguments secret in a case involving an immigrant's challenge of his treatment after the September 11 attacks.

Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel wants the high court to consider whether the government acted improperly by secretly jailing him after the attacks and keeping his court fight private. He is supported by more than 20 journalism organisations and media companies.

In a one-paragraph filing today, Solicitor General Theodore Olson told justices the matter "pertains to information that is required to be kept under seal".

Justices are sometimes asked to keep parts of cases private because of information sensitive for national security or other reasons, but it's unusual for an entire filing to be kept secret.

Lucy A Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said she was disappointed by the government's request.

"The idea that there is nothing that could be filed publicly is really ridiculous," she said. "It just emphasises our point that we're living in frightening times. People can be arrested, thrown in jail and have secret court proceedings, and we know absolutely nothing about it."

The court will decide later whether to consider Bellahouel's appeal and at the same time whether to allow the secret filing. Justices will be able to review the government's private arguments.

Bellahouel, an Algerian who worked as a waiter in South Florida, came under FBI scrutiny because hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi dined where he worked in the weeks before the September 11, 2001, attacks.

He was among hundreds of foreigners rounded up after the hijackings. The government has refused to release names and information about the detentions, arguing that a blanket secrecy policy is needed to protect national security.

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal last year from newspapers that sought information about the detentions. Bellahouel's case asks the justices to consider whether the government violated the nation's long tradition of open court proceedings.

Lower courts kept the existence of the case private, and Olson's filing deletes the name of the appeals court that ruled against Bellahouel.

Bellahouel, who is free on $US10,000 ($A13,055) bond, is known in court papers only as MKB. Because of a mistake at the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, the MKB records were briefly made public.

A Miami legal newspaper reported his identity and said he was released after five months, and after he had been taken to Alexandria, Virginia, to testify before a federal grand jury.

Rank	Location	Receipts	Donors/Avg	Freepers/Avg	Monthlies
42	Idaho	60.00	2	30.00	92	0.65	45.00	2

Florida..again
Secrecy Within
Algerian native's federal appeal in Miami has court altering records, closing hearing in name of security

Dan Christensen
Miami Daily Business Review
03-12-2003

With war in Iraq looming, the largely invisible U.S. campaign against terror being waged in the nation's federal courts surfaced in extraordinary ways in Miami last week.

A published court calendar for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was obliterated to omit the names of litigants in a sealed civil case brought by an Algerian man the Miami Daily Business Review has learned was among 1,200 young Arab and Muslim men secretly detained in the post-Sept. 11 nationwide dragnet.

Later, the appellate court's computer records were altered to remove from public view any information about the case, No. 02-11060.

In between, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit closed its courtroom March 5 to the public and the press to hear arguments in the sealed case.

Court records that were briefly public said the case is styled Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel v. Monica S. Wetzel. Wetzel is a former warden at the Federal Correctional Institution in South Miami-Dade County.

"That's very unusual," said one federal judge, referring to the closure of the appeals court.

Also unusual: The public docket for the Southern District of Florida, where the case apparently originated, is devoid of any mention of either Bellahouel or his case.

From its style, the case appears to involve a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Typically, even sealed cases appear on the public docket.

Persons seeking release from unlawful imprisonment routinely file such writs. Why the appeal is taking place is unclear, however, because Bellahouel is out of federal custody and living in Deerfield Beach, Fla., with his American-born wife.

Bellahouel declined to be interviewed.

"I cannot talk about it. I am not allowed," said Bellahouel, who has not been charged with any crime.

In another case, the U.S. Attorney's Office has taken secret steps to remove from the public record any trace of a habeas corpus case brought by a stateless Palestinian man from Sunrise, Fla., who's fighting deportation after being labeled a "terrorist" by an immigration judge late last year.

The matter is so sensitive that even the government's motion to seal is sealed.

Adham Amin Hassoun is the first person in the United States known to have been ordered out of the country for alleged terrorist activities, according to local and national civil rights attorneys, including the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project.

Hassoun, an activist in South Florida's Muslim community, was detained in June by agents from South Florida's Joint Terrorism Task Force who'd learned of his friendship with alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla. The two once attended the same Broward, Fla., mosque. Hassoun was accused of overstaying his 1990 nonimmigrant student visa.

In December, Hassoun filed a 23-page habeas petition in U.S. District Court now assigned to Judge K. Michael Moore. The filing, first reported in the Miami Daily Business Review, made public the outline of the government's secret case against him.

The petition says the FBI has accused Hassoun of recruiting terrorists, taking part in an unidentified assassination plot, and being a member of a group whose leader was convicted in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

U.S. Immigration Judge Neale S. Foster in Miami also said in court that Hassoun "had contact" with Osama bin Laden, the petition says.

Hassoun and his Miami lawyer, Akhtar Hussain, deny he's a terrorist. And they say the government has produced no evidence to back up its accusations.

In a telephone interview from the Department of Homeland Security's Krome Processing Facility in southwestern Miami-Dade last week, Hassoun said the government included its two-page motion to seal his case among a batch of secret evidence it filed recently. Hassoun, who is representing himself in U.S. District Court, said the evidence is precisely what the FBI in the INS court used against him.

The government's filing of secret evidence in the case is a matter of public record. But what the case file doesn't indicate, in either its electronic or paper versions, is that the government is now moving to seal the entire habeas case.

"Have I ever seen that happen in 20 years of practice? No," said Hussain. "Times have changed."

The lack of public notice about the United States' intentions has the practical effect of foreclosing any opportunity to respond by the public or the press.

The government's secret move to seal Hassoun's case is "scary," said Lucas Guttentag, the Oakland, Calif.-based director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project.

"Across-the-board secrecy or closure orders that are themselves secret deny the public the right to judge our government's actions," Guttentag said. The courts, he said, should resist granting blanket secrecy orders and "provide an opportunity for the press and public to oppose the closure."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Dexter Lee, who filed the motion, declined comment. Jacqueline Becerra, the spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Marcos Jimenez, said her office would not comment.

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