Posted on 07/29/2005 8:18:29 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK - A federal judge considering whether the government should be forced to reveal the identities of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base detainees suggested Friday that each one be asked whether he wants his name made public.
Judge Jed S. Rakoff offered the idea as he considered the government's position that the United States must hide the identities to protect the detainees and their family members from potential reprisals.
If asked, "that person may be saying, `Yes, please, tell the world,'" Rakoff told Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Wolstein.
Wolstein said there might be "military reasons" for not engaging in such a dialogue with a detainee, a roadblock the judge said could be cured by posing the question in a two-paragraph letter to each detainee.
The exchange occurred during oral arguments in Manhattan over how much information the government must release on 558 tribunals conducted in the last year to give detainees a chance to challenge their incarceration.
The Associated Press filed a lawsuit in April, saying the government was reluctant to release information from the tribunals that should be public.
In court papers, the government said it has produced more than 3,900 pages of documents that provide a detailed picture of each detainee's life before he was captured, including his profession, work history and connections to terrorist groups.
Wolstein said the information already released was sufficient to satisfy the public interest in monitoring how the tribunals were conducted.
She said there was no history of judicial rulings that would define the law in a way to permit the disclosure of names and other facts the AP was demanding.
David A. Schulz, an attorney who argued the case for the AP, said there was no history of rulings in similar cases because "there are a couple of fairly novel issues here."
He said the detaining of hundreds of men for nearly four years without revealing to the public who they were and why they were being held was "really an unprecedented action by the government" that clashed with the principles of democracy.
Schulz said protecting the privacy of detainees was an "excuse by the government to keep information from the public, to keep the public from knowing what they are doing."
He said Rakoff's idea to ask each detainee his preference should be used only as a last resort.
The judge said he would rule in August on whether the names and other facts such as ages and hometowns must be revealed.
The government began staging combatant status review tribunals to let detainees refute their classifications as "enemy combatants" last August after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2004 that the detainees may challenge their imprisonment.
Guantanamo holds 520 prisoners, while more than 230 others have been released or transferred to the custody of their home governments. Most were captured during the U.S. war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. Only a few have been charged with any crime.
The Bush administration designated them as enemy combatants, a classification that includes anyone who supported the Taliban or al-Qaida and does not afford as many legal protections as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. The designation allows indefinite detention without charges.
He probably is consulting with the ICC or the Hague.
It's the trend in judgeshipping these days. ;-)
ICJ ,, Int'l Court of Justice ,,oops
In the order you asked: No, and Yes.
Where were the critics of the Iraq war on the morning of 9/11? Are Michael Moore, Howard Dean, Jane Fonda, Ted Kennedy, and you-know-who-you-are opponents of the war suffering from amnesia or are they just as evil as the Islamo-fascists who were responsible for these horrifying images?
Federal Judicial Service:
U. S. District Court, Southern District of New York
Nominated by William J. Clinton on October 11, 1995, to a seat vacated by David N. Edelstein; Confirmed by the Senate on December 29, 1995, and received commission on January 4, 1996
Funny, I figured he was appointed by BJ. Just had to go look to make sure.
"He said the detaining of hundreds of men for nearly four years without revealing to the public who they were and why they were being held was "really an unprecedented action by the government"
No, it is not unprecedented. In war, it is not even unusual. Abraham Lincoln put the city leaders of Baltimore & their families in prison and suspended habeus corpus in the Civil War.....Franklin Roosevelt imprisoned thousands of US citizens of Japanese decent in WWII.
War is hell. Innocents get caught up in it and some die. We saw that on 9/11 when the terrorists attacked us.
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