Federal judge to government: Open detention hearing or let man go
By The Associated Press
09.18.02
DETROIT — The Justice Department is to review a federal judge's ruling and decide whether to hold a new and open hearing for the co-founder of an Islamic charity with suspected terrorist ties or let him go.
Rabih Haddad, a Lebanese citizen who had been living in Ann Arbor, has been in federal custody since his Dec. 14, 2001, arrest on a visa violation. Since then, his detention hearings have been closed to the public and the news media. Haddad is suspected of funneling money to terrorists.
"An open detention and removal hearing will assure the public that the government itself is honoring the very Democratic principles that the terrorists who committed the atrocities of 9/11 sought to destroy," U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds said in her 12-page ruling yesterday.
Edmunds said the department must hold the hearing within 10 days or release him.
Late last month, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government cannot hold secret deportation hearings for Haddad.
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, appeals court judges considering the legality of secret immigration hearings for terrorism suspects expressed concern yesterday that making the proceedings public could help terrorists stage more attacks.
"We could make a decision here ... and people could die. Lots of people," said 3rd Circuit Judge Morton Greenberg.
The 3rd Circuit is considering a Justice Department request to overturn a lower court's ruling that rejected the government's practice of holding secret immigration hearings related to the terrorism investigation as unconstitutional.
Justice Department lawyer Gregory Katsas told the three-judge panel that opening the hearings could cause "potentially catastrophic" harm. For instance, he said, revealing how suspects were caught would give terrorists clues about how to enter the country undetected.
"Too much information will get out," Katsas said. He concluded his argument by saying that in times of war, "Loose lips sink ships."
News media organizations and civil rights groups have sued to make the hearings public, or to allow them to be closed only in cases where the government has persuaded a judge that secrecy was necessary to protect national security.
Hundreds of foreigners were secretly detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service after the Sept. 11 attacks. Critics have charged that many of them weren't terrorists and were detained for long periods without cause.
"Society has an overwhelming interest to know when its government is detaining people for months and months and months," said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt.
Unlike criminal or civil trials, immigration hearings are not always open to the public. Katsas argued that a 40-year-old federal law allows judges to exclude the public from INS detention hearings if doing so is in the public's best interest.
Detention hearings were open for decades until shortly after Sept. 11, when the chief immigration judge ordered them closed for detainees the FBI said were of special interest in the terrorism investigation.
All three judges on the 3rd Circuit panel yesterday questioned whether immigration judges are qualified to determine if making a particular case public would harm national security.
Greenberg said he watched the World Trade Center attack unfold on television, and he would be wary of making a ruling that would aid in another attack.
"If we make a decision that the government is wrong here, no one knows what the impact will be," he said.
The judges said they expected to make a decision soon in the case, which the ACLU is arguing on behalf of the New Jersey Law Journal, a weekly publication, and North Jersey Media Group, publisher of the Herald News of West Paterson, a daily newspaper.
U.S. District Judge John Bissell in Newark, N.J., ruled against the government in May, finding that it could close hearings only on a case-by-case basis. The U.S. Supreme Court in June issued an order staying the decision while the case was appealed to the 3rd Circuit.
Meanwhile, a Justice Department spokesman said the agency was reviewing the ruling in the Michigan case.
The ACLU, several Detroit-area newspapers, and U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, sued to open the Haddad proceedings.
Edmunds said yesterday that Haddad must receive a new hearing within 10 days of her order and that the hearing must be open to the public.
"The government has failed to make a particularized showing that its interests in fighting terrorism are implicated in Haddad's case," Edmunds wrote.
Ashraf Nubani, an attorney for Haddad, said he was ecstatic over yesterday's ruling, but he still expected the government to urge the new judge to close the hearing.
"It's nonsense," Nubani said. "Pastor Haddad has never in any sense of the word posed a threat to the nation's security or had any involvement with the events of Sept. 11."
The same day Haddad was arrested, the U.S. Department of Treasury froze the bank accounts of his Global Relief Foundation and agents raided its suburban Chicago office.
The Bush administration has said it suspects Global Relief of having ties to terrorism, but no criminal charges have been filed against Haddad or the foundation, which Haddad helped found in 1992.
Global Relief, based in Bridgeview, Ill., says it provides food, emergency relief, medical aid and education training in more than 20 countries, including Pakistan, Iraq and Chechnya.