Reuters
I'll make you proud George!The Obama administration overstepped its authority by trying to impose new restrictions on attorney access to prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.
A few months ago, the Justice Department sought to put new restrictions on attorney visits to prisoners whose cases had been denied or dismissed.
It asked them to sign a "memorandum of understanding" that the court said essentially gave the commander of the detention operation unfettered authority and discretion over attorney visits.
The new rules would have restricted the number of lawyers and interpreters who could visit any given prisoner and put new restrictions on what the lawyers could do with classified information learned from prisoners, including documents the lawyers themselves had written.
Some of the lawyers refused to sign the memorandum of understanding and challenged the issue in court.
Lamberth said few of the prisoners were fluent in English or knowledgeable about U.S. law, and that they were held in an isolated location without the means to file legal challenges on their own. He said those who had lost their cases still had the right to file appeals or new challenges under laws that had been revised.
"In the case of Guantanamo detainees, access to the courts means nothing without access to counsel," Lamberth wrote.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, which has challenged the Guantanamo detention operation, praised the decision.
"The new rules came out of the blue and can only be seen as an effort to punish the men at Guantanamo for exercising their right to challenge their detention," the group's executive director, Vincent Warren, said in a statement.
