Lawyers defend access to detainees

WASHINGTON —  The New York City Bar says the Bush administration is trying to evade responsibility for problems at the Guantanamo Bay prison by falsely blaming defense lawyers for the trouble.

The group’s president leveled the criticism in a letter asking Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales to drop a Justice Department proposal to limit lawyers’ access to the nearly 400 detainees.

In a court filing this month, the department said attorney access via the mail system had “enabled detainees’ counsel to cause unrest on the base by informing detainees about terrorist attacks.”

The mail system was “misused,” the filing said, to inform detainees about military operations in Iraq, activities of terrorist leaders, efforts in the fight against terrorism, the Hezbollah attack on Israel and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

“This is an astonishing and disingenuous assertion,” the bar’s president, Barry M. Kamins, wrote Gonzales.

Kamins said many detainees had been held in solitary confinement for prolonged periods and had lost hope of a fair hearing to demonstrate their innocence. “Blaming counsel for the hunger strikes and other unrest is a continuation of a disreputable and unwarranted smear campaign against counsel,” the letter said.

Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said the department was reviewing the New York City Bar’s letter.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the military was giving broad lawyer access to many detainees, even though the detainees were accused of having Al Qaeda or Taliban links and the U.S. was at war.

The department wants to narrow the definition of “legal mail” and limit the number of face-to-face meetings.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is to hear arguments on the department’s proposal May 15.