US:The Bush administration wants to put new restrictions on lawyers who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay, limiting the number of times they can visit clients and allowing intelligence officers to read letters from lawyers to inmates.
The justice department has asked a federal court to impose the restrictions because it claims that lawyers have caused unrest among inmates and are acting as a conduit for information about Guantánamo to the media.
Under the proposed new rules, lawyers would be allowed to visit existing clients no more than three times and could meet prospective clients only once before taking on a case.
Government officials would be allowed to deny lawyers access to secret evidence about an inmate without the authority of a court or military tribunal.
"There is no right on the part of counsel to access to detained aliens on a secure military base in a foreign country," the justice department said in a court filing.
At present, lawyers can visit inmates at Guantánamo as often as they wish, although they must sign protective orders and are required to relinquish their notes for security review, and only see them, read them and write briefs on them from a special work station in Washington, DC.
Many defence lawyers say multiple visits are necessary to win the confidence of prisoners, who are often suspicious at first, fearing that the lawyers may in fact be interrogators.
In its court filing, however, the justice department said that lawyers' visits had fuelled unrest at the prison, citing hunger strikes and other protests. An affidavit by a navy lawyer at Guantánamo, Cmdr Patrick McCarthy, that accompanied the filing, said lawyers had gathered information from the detainees for news organisations and had provided detainees with accounts of events outside Guantánamo, including a speech at an Amnesty International conference and details of terrorist attacks.
"Such information threatens the security of the camp, as it could incite violence among the detainees," he said.
The Bush administration argues that, since Congress and the courts have determined that expansive habeas corpus petitions are not available to the detainees, rules such as those that allowed unlimited lawyers' visits are no longer necessary.