NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - Lawyers for people arrested for questioning in the terrorism investigation are using a variety of legal tactics to try to chip away at the unprecedented secrecy surrounding the detentions.
Although hundreds of detainees have been released since the attacks, the Justice Department says 326 people remain in custody as part of the sweeping terrorism investigation launched after Sept. 11, most of them in New Jersey jails.
In the latest lawsuit filed on their behalf, civil rights groups and three New Jersey publications are seeking a ban on secret court hearings for detainees. The suit against the federal government was filed Wednesday.
``America and Americans have a long history of distrust and disdain for secret proceedings,'' said Ed Barocas, legal director of the Newark chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. ``What transpires in court is public property.''
The suit was filed by the ACLU chapter and the New York-based Center For Constitutional Rights on behalf of the New Jersey Law Journal and North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record of Hackensack and the Herald News of West Paterson. Reporters at the papers who tried to cover hearings involving detainees were barred from courtrooms, along with the rest of the public.
The suit mirrors another that the ACLU, two Detroit newspapers and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., filed in January, seeking to open immigration court hearings for the co-founder of an Islamic charity raided in December by federal agents seeking terrorism links.
The federal government says it needs to clamp down on the release of information because it might help terrorist organizations know which of their members are in custody.
Justice Department spokesman Dan Nelson did not return calls seeking comment Wednesday.
The suit filed Wednesday was the second pursued by the Newark ACLU branch seeking information about detainees. In January, it sued two New Jersey counties in seeking the names of Sept. 11 detainees, which it said are public information under state law.
``Here, you're first guilty, then after a few months you become a suspect, then finally, you're innocent,'' said Regis Fernandez, a New Jersey immigration lawyer representing several detainees.
Fernandez and several other New Jersey immigration lawyers met last fall to plan a response to secrecy directives that were rendering attorneys and advocates for detainees virtually powerless.
Attorneys have made similar complaints in the case of Rabih Haddad. He has been in custody in Chicago since his Dec. 14 arrest at his Ann Arbor, Mich., home on immigration charges. That was the same day federal agents closed the suburban Chicago offices of the Global Relief Foundation, a group he co-founded, as they investigated possible links to terrorism. His case has been heard behind closed doors.
Secret hearings are ``something associated with other countries' systems, not our country's,'' said Haddad's attorney, Ashraf Nubani. ``The public has become used to watching justice done in open court. When it becomes closed, we can only assume the worst.''
Malek Zeidan, a Syrian doughnut shop worker charged with overstaying his visa in New Jersey, sued Attorney General John Ashcroft and a Newark immigration judge who barred the public from attending a Feb. 21 hearing.
At issue is a Sept. 21 memorandum issued by chief U.S. Immigration Judge Michael Creppy instructing judges to close hearings involving detainees whose cases have been designated as of ``special interest'' to the FBI. It also prohibits court administrators from listing the cases on dockets, or confirming when hearings are to be held.
``It's really a disgrace that the Attorney General of the United States thinks we should return to tactics used during the Spanish Inquisition,'' said Zeidan's attorney, Bennet Zurofsky of Newark. ``My client comes from a part of the world where they use these secret trials, and then people disappear.''