Right Groups Blast US Federal Appeals Court Ruling Giving Washington Green 
Light for Secret Arrests 

Washington, June 18 (Radio Havana Cuba) - Human rights groups are blasting a US federal 
appeals court ruling Tuesday that allows the government to withhold names 
and other information about hundreds of Muslim immigrants rounded up after 
the September 11 terrorist attacks. Human Rights Watch warned that the 
decision would open the door to widespread secret detentions on immigration 
charges, while the American Civil Liberties Union charged that the appeals 
court ignored mounting evidence of systematic government misconduct and 
abuse - documented just two weeks ago in a major report by the Justice 
Department's Inspector General - in its treatment of more than 700 
detainees. 

ACLU Legal Director Steven Shapiro called secret arrests "odious in a 
democratic society." "Secrecy breeds abuses," said Shapiro, adding that "a 
government of the people and for the people must be visible to the people." 
Kate Martin, a lawyer for the Washington-based Center for National Security 
Studies suggested that her group and other organizations that had brought 
the case to court would probably appeal it to the Supreme Court, calling the 
ruling "the first time ever that a US court has sanctioned secret arrests." 
The 2-1 ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia 
drew a harsh dissenting opinion from Judge David Tatel, who accused his 
colleagues of "uncritical deference to the government's vague, poorly 
explained arguments for withholding broad categories of information about 
the detainees," which, he added, "is in violation of their constitutional 
rights." 

The ruling is said to mark the latest in a string of major victories for 
Attorney General John Ashcroft, who has widely been accused of whittling 
away at constitutional rights and civil liberties under the pretext of the 
so-called war on terrorism. The Bush administration so far has largely 
withstood challenges to its broad use of a powerful surveillance law, its 
closing of immigration hearings and its use of enemy combatant laws to 
prosecute US citizens accused of ties to terrorists.