Court: Deportation hearings can be secret

The federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled on Tuesday that the Bush administration had acted lawfully in holding hundreds of deportation hearings in secret based on its assertion that those detained may have links to terrorism.

The decision was at odds with one rendered by the federal appeals court in Cincinnati in August, and the conflict between the two courts makes it reasonably likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will consider one of the cases.

For the past year, reporters, relatives of defendants and other members of the public have been barred from deportation hearings for immigrants detained in the nation's investigation of terrorism. The Justice Department asserts that opening the hearings would compromise national security by releasing information that could aid terrorist networks.

In the decision on Tuesday, the three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to reverse the ruling of a federal district judge in Newark, N.J., who ordered that all deportation hearings nationwide be opened unless the government could prove that secrecy was needed on a case-by-case basis.

The case was brought by two New Jersey newspapers and turned on the scope of the press and public's right to attend administrative proceedings. But both the majority and dissent in the ruling on Tuesday understood the case to be about something more fundamental: the balance between liberty and security after Sept. 11.

Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who represented the newspapers, said his clients were reviewing the decision and considering their options.

Gelernt stressed that the newspapers did not contend that every hearing must be open, but only that immigration judges should balance the competing interests on a case-by-case basis. "The government's burden here was to show that every minute of every hearing must be closed," he said.

One of six sleeper cell suspects gets bail

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A federal judge granted bail Tuesday to only one of six men accused of being part of an al-Qaida sleeper cell.

In granting $600,000 bail to Sahim Alwan, Magistrate H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr. said Alwan had "disclaimed any continued participation in the activities of al-Qaida" and had extricated himself from a training camp in Afghanistan.

As to the five others, the judge said: "I find that each defendant . . . has not come forward with sufficient evidence to offset the government's claim of dangerousness and risk of flight."

The defendants -- all Americans of Yemeni descent -- are accused of being members of an al-Qaida cell awaiting orders from Osama bin Laden's terror network to attack the United States.

If convicted, the men could get up to 15 years in prison.

Before his ruling, Schroeder spoke of the fear, anxiety and paranoia resulting from the Sept. 11 terror attacks that were blamed on al-Qaida. He said he weighed those feelings against the rights of defendants in the United States.

Senators ask FBI director to protect whistle-blower

WASHINGTON -- Two senators are pressing FBI director Robert Mueller to promise that an agent will not be retaliated against after she accused bureau investigators of stealing a Tiffany crystal globe from the World Trade Center ruins.

Special Agent Jane Turner of the FBI's Minneapolis office said she turned the globe over to the Justice Department's inspector general's office after local FBI officials would not act on her complaint.

Turner also contacted Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a member of the committee who has pushed for stronger protections of whistle-blowers. Leahy and Grassley contacted Mueller last month.

In a letter to the inspector general's office dated Sept. 11, 2002, Turner said she discovered the globe sitting on a secretary's desk in August. When Turner asked about it, the secretary told her someone from the bureau's evidence recovery team had recovered it from ground zero.

Turner, a 24-year FBI veteran, said in her letter she was particularly galled by that because she is investigating thefts of "souvenirs" taken from the World Trade Center evidence recovery site.

Grassley and Leahy said the globe had been valued by experts at more than $5,000. A crystal globe 2.5 inches in diameter is listed on the Tiffany & Co. Web site for $115, but the lawmakers said the estimate was based on the globe's value as an artifact from the trade center.

Al-Qaida tape warns U.S.: You reap what you sow

LONDON -- In a taped interview, a speaker purported to be Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, threatens new attacks on the United States, its allies and its economy.

The authenticity of the audiotape, obtained by Associated Press Television News on Tuesday, could not be independently confirmed. It was not known when the tape was made -- though it refers to the United States' recent standoff with Iraq and a July 1 U.S. bombing in Afghanistan.

The speaker said to be al-Zawahri accuses the United States of trying, through its campaign against Iraq, to subjugate the Arab world on behalf of Israel.

Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian who is regarded as a primary strategist of the al-Qaida terrorists and was with bin Laden in Afghanistan, disappeared soon after Sept. 11 but is widely thought to have survived U.S. bombing there. U.S. officials say they don't know whether he or bin Laden are alive.

APTN on Tuesday played the tape to Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, who has interviewed al-Zawahri.

"To my knowledge it does sound like the voice of Ayman al-Zawahri," Atwan said.

In the recording, an unidentified person interviewed the speaker said to be al-Zawahri, who issued a warning to what he called "the deputies of America," to get out of the Muslim world, specifically Germany and France.

"The mujahid youth has already sent messages to Germany and France," the speaker said. "However, if these doses are not enough, we are prepared with the help of Allah, to inject further doses."

A May 8 attack on a bus in Pakistan killed 11 French engineers and an April 11 blast at a synagogue in Tunisia, a former French colony, killed 16 people, including 11 Germans. Both attacks have been linked to al-Qaida.

"As for America itself, it should expect to be treated the same way it has acted," the man on the tape says, pointing to suffering of Muslims in Afghanistan and in the Palestinian territories.

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