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.