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Politics

Pentagon to bar media from Gitmo hearings

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 7, 2007

WASHINGTON - Reporters will be barred from hearings that begin Friday in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for 14 terror suspects transferred last year from secret CIA prisons, officials said Tuesday.

Interest in the 14 is particularly high because of their alleged links to the al-Qaida network. Among them is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. He was captured in Pakistan in March 2003.

A New York-based human rights group that represents one of the 14 men accused the Pentagon of designing "sham tribunals." The organization contended that its client, Majid Khan, has been denied access to his lawyers since October 2006 "solely to prevent his torture and abuse from becoming public" and to protect complicit foreign governments.

U.S. authorities say Khan was being groomed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for an attack inside the United States.

"We might expect this in Libya or China, but not America," the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement. It said Khan was subjected to CIA interrogation methods that amounted to torture. Pentagon officials have said any allegations of mistreatment are investigated.

In announcing the hearings, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he could not say which of the 14 would be tried first or how long the process would take. No word of the hearings will be made public until the government releases a transcript of the proceedings, edited to remove material deemed potentially damaging to national security, he said.

Whitman said the hearings for the 14 suspects would be closed to the media to protect national security interests that could be compromised by the detainees' statements.

The hearings, known as combatant status review tribunals, are meant to determine whether a prisoner is an "enemy combatant."

Should a prisoner be deemed an enemy combatant, President Bush could designate him as eligible for a military trial. The first of these is expected to begin within the next six months.

News coverage was not prohibited during previous combatant status review tribunals - more than 550 were held between July 2004 and March 2005 - but some information was restricted.

[Last modified March 7, 2007, 01:17:02]