Pubdate: Mon, 19 Jan 2004
Source: Tallahassee Democrat (FL)
Copyright: 2004 Tallahassee Democrat.
Contact:  http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/444
Author: Catherine Wilson, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

COURT SECRECY RAISES CONCERNS

Case Related To 9-11 Under Seal

MIAMI - An Algerian waiter who may have served Sept. 11 hijackers. Drug 
informants who dished out dirt on the upper echelon of a Colombian drug 
cartel. An interstate prostitution ring.

All of these are examples of cases moving through the federal court system 
either completely or partially in secret. And while some secrecy has always 
been part of the process, defense attorneys, civil libertarians and news 
media say the federal courts are going too far in closing their work to the 
public, particularly in terrorism and drug cases.

Critics point to the case of Algerian-born Mohamed Bellahouel, who was 
arrested after he was linked to at least two of the terror hijackers. He's 
appealing a deportation order, but the case remains under seal, presumably 
for national security reasons, and has reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the informants' cases, Miami judges have started unsealing some records 
on secret deals between prosecutors and defense attorneys. A prostitution 
case in Macon, Ga., started in secret, but the judge sided with the defense 
to open court records several months later.

"When you get to the point where you have people convicted and sentenced 
and are sitting in a federal prison for multiple years and there is no 
record of how they got there, it's obvious to me things have gone way too 
far," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for 
Freedom of the Press.

No one outside the justice system knows how widespread the practice of 
so-called secret dockets is, and insiders aren't saying. U.S. Solicitor 
General Theodore Olson asked permission to file the government's official 
position on Bellahouel with the Supreme Court under seal Jan. 5. In Miami, 
Matthew Dates, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, and Clarence 
Maddox, clerk of federal courts, declined comment for this report.

The reporters group urged the court to open the records of Bellahouel.

Bellahouel's case was revealed by mistake when it was listed on an appeals 
court calendar last March. Subsequent court papers show the 11th U.S. 
Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta heard arguments behind closed doors and 
rejected his habeas petition in a sealed decision in an unusually short 27 
days.

Bellahouel came under FBI scrutiny because hijackers Mohamed Atta and 
Marwan al Shehhi dined where he worked in South Florida in the weeks before 
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Bellahouel testified in Virginia before the grand jury investigating 
terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui and was released after five months on 
$10,000 bail in March 2002.

The Supreme Court refused last Monday to hear a potentially unwieldy 
challenge to the government's policy of secrecy in holding hundreds of 
foreigners after the Sept. 11 attacks. In his stand-alone case, Bellahouel 
and the Reporters Committee want the courthouse secrecy issue to be 
addressed head on.

Trailing along in the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit is an appeal challenging 
the conviction and 30-year sentence of Medellin cocaine cartel kingpin 
Fabio Ochoa. Before a judge agreed to unseal a batch of papers, Ochoa's 
bulging case had 112 sealed filings.

His attorneys also found evidence of at least four mysteriously missing or 
dead-end criminal files.

Nicholas Bergonzoli, a former Ochoa business partner, existed as a drug 
defendant in Bridgeport, Conn., but his case turned into a black hole when 
it was transferred to Miami in 1999, long before terrorist security 
concerns were raised.

Court files in Miami have extended gaps on reputed traffickers Orlando 
Sanchez Christancho and Julio Correa, presumed dead in Colombia after 
apparently turning informant, and James Springette, formerly on the FBI's 
most wanted list, in Augusta, Ga.

News media reported on Springette's cocaine smuggling guilty plea last 
September.

At a hearing for Sanchez, the prosecutor suggested keeping all trace of the 
session secret, including the standard clerk's audio tape. An unsealed 
transcript indicates the same procedure was used at a previous hearing.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ann Vitunac said, "We are going to need to do the 
same with this tape and not log this anywhere that it will reflect on 
WinDOC that this hearing was even held."

WinDOC is the court clerk's computerized docketing system numerically 
listing every paper filing in criminal and civil cases from arrest warrants 
and complaints to attorneys' changes of office address.
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