Feds must release names of detainees

WASHINGTON -- The government must reveal the names of those held in the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal judge ruled Friday, rejecting claims terrorists could use the information to plot new crimes.

The Justice Department has not justified a blanket policy of secrecy about more than 1,000 people picked up since the jetliner attacks, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled. She gave the government 15 days to provide the names.

The ruling is a major setback for the government, which is only beginning to defend its post-Sept. 11 security and anti-terrorism measures in court. The Justice Department did not immediately say whether it will appeal.

"The government has used its arrest power to detain individuals as part of an investigation that is widespread in its scope and secrecy," Kessler wrote. "Unquestionably, the public's interest in learning the identities of those arrested and detained is essential to verifying whether the government is operating within the bounds of the law."

The judge said there may be exceptions to the release of names, if an individual detainee objects or if the government can show that separate court orders prohibit release of information about someone held as a material witness in a terrorism investigation.

She gave the Justice Department 15 days to back up its claim that it can withhold information about material witnesses. A material witness allegedly has substantial information about a crime but is not himself charged. Such witnesses may be arrested, but may not be held indefinitely.

'A vindication'

"The decision is a complete repudiation of the attorney general's policy of rounding up hundreds of individuals in secrecy," said Kate Martin, whose Center for National Security Studies is among civil rights and human rights organizations that sued the government for information about the secret arrests. "The opinion is a vindication of the basic principle that you can't have secret arrests, that secret arrests are undemocratic."

Those arrested are all apparently foreign citizens, and many have been charged with immigration violations.

Kessler largely limited her ruling to the government's obligations under the federal Freedom of Information Act. In a partial victory for the Justice Department, she rejected the notion that the civil liberties groups have a free-speech right to some information.