Supreme Court requests government to justify secret detention
From Bill Mears
CNN Washington Bureau
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Some of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration has been asked by the nation's highest court to justify the secrecy concerning an Algerian man detained as part of a roundup of Muslim men after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In a brief note, the Supreme Court requested that the solicitor general file a response in the case, in which the federal government has refused to release the man's identity or even confirm the existence of the case and its circumstances. The immigrant has filed a habaes corpus appeal -- a document ordering person in custody to be brought before a court -- protesting his detention.
The government has until December 3 to respond. The court would then decide whether to accept the immigrant's case, and schedule oral arguments, but when that would happen is unclear. Solicitor General Theodore Olson had told the court a month ago he did not plan to respond to the immigrant's appeal, prompting the court to ask for the Justice Department's position anyway.
Almost no information about the man's case has been released by the lower federal courts, and lawyers involved say they have been ordered not to comment. Court hearings have been closed, records sealed, and the man is identified only by the initials M.K.B.
The government used similar secrecy rules following the roundup and detention of hundreds of immigrants, many of them Middle Eastern or Muslim men, in the weeks after the September 11 attacks. The government in those cases justified a blanket policy of closing those immigration-court proceedings to the press and public, by arguing national security and the need to protect information that could reach terrorists.
The issue now before the Supreme Court is whether such secrecy can be used when someone challenges the government to justify their detention. The justices have so far refused to accept any constitutional challenges arising from the Bush administration's fight against terrorism, but separate appeals are pending before the court.
In an appeal filed by M.K.B.'s lawyers, small parts of which have been made public, federal public defender Kathleen Williams asked for Supreme Court intervention "to preserve and protect the public's common-law and First Amendment rights to know, but also to reinforce those rights in a time of increased national suspicion about the free flow of information and debate."
The brief noted M.K.B. is married to an American citizen, and was taken into immigration custody in October 2001. He was eventually released on bond five months later.
Because of a clerical error by a federal appeals court, more details of the case were inadvertently made public. CNN has confirmed the man's identity as 34-year-old Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel. He is an Algerian waiter who was reportedly questioned by the FBI and taken before a federal grand jury as a material witness. He allegedly served meals in the Miami area to two of the September 11 hijackers, ringleader Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Sheehi, shortly before the attacks.
Bellahouel denies any involvement in terrorism.
Many of the details surrounding Bellahouel were first reported by the Daily Business Review, a Miami newspaper.
The case is M.K.B. v. Warden, case no. 03-6747.
