A New Jersey appellate court recently overturned a March trial court ruling that the INS had to release the names of those detained during the September 11th investigation. Finding that government arguments that releasing the information would jeopardize terrorist investigation, the court agreed that secrecy was required by national security.
The court also upheld a government regulation, passed after the trial court ruling, forbidding the release of the detainees’ names by state or local governments. The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the case, had argued that the regulation violated state sovereignty.
This is the first case in which a court has upheld government efforts to conduct the investigation in secret. The ACLU said it would appeal to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
In a similar case, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that all immigration proceedings be open to the public while the Department of Justice appeals a lower court ruling that closed proceedings violate the Constitution.
In yet another case dealing with detentions and proceedings related to the September 11th investigation, a federal judge in Arizona ruled that allowing the public to attend a bond hearing would damage the investigation. The judge also ordered the parties involved to not discuss the case. INS officials arrested Zakaria Soubra, a citizen of Lebanon, in late May, allegedly for violating his student status by failing to enroll in the required number of courses. He is also one of the eight students name in the notorious FBI memo from the Phoenix office, warning that Muslim extremists were attending US flight schools.
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