Attorneys for Detainees Plan Fast Action

Attorneys for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison said yesterday that they will quickly seek court review of their clients' detentions as the government began to consider how to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling ordering access to federal courts for the 595 captives at the military jail in Cuba.

"We'll go into federal district court [in Washington] very quickly to seek access to our clients" as a first step toward seeking court hearings, Joseph Margulies, an attorney for some of the detainees, told reporters yesterday.

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision on the alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters at Guantanamo Bay leaves it to the government to craft a plan under which federal judges can review the evidence against the captives, and officials offered few details on how that might be accomplished.

But experts agreed that the ruling undermines the U.S. government's determined effort to seal off the environment at Guantanamo Bay for interrogating detainees without interference from courts, lawyers and the outside world.

In another decision yesterday, the court similarly provided the means for U.S. citizen Yaser Esam Hamdi to contest his detention as an "enemy combatant." The court ruled that Hamdi, who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and has spent more than two years in a South Carolina military brig, must have access to the U.S. legal system.

In a third ruling, the justices returned the case of another U.S. citizen, Jose Padilla, to lower courts on jurisdictional grounds. Padilla is expected to enjoy the benefits of the ruling in Hamdi's case.

Federal public defender Frank W. Dunham Jr., who represents Hamdi, pledged to meet his client later this week to begin mapping out a strategy for an eventual habeas corpus hearing. Hamdi, who was born in Louisiana but raised in Saudi Arabia, was captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan, U.S. officials said.

Padilla's attorney, Donna R. Newman, said that she would immediately file a challenge in federal court in South Carolina. His case had been heard in federal court in New York, which the justices ruled did not have jurisdiction.

Until now, the two attorneys have met with their clients only at the discretion of the Pentagon. Military minders have attended and videotaped the sessions, and the attorneys have been prohibited from discussing the meetings publicly.

A senior Justice Department official said that an initial reading of the opinions leaves much to be determined, including the process for bringing the detainees into the federal court system and how courts will balance the need to keep sensitive military intelligence secret while protecting the rights of the accused.

The official said the rulings create the potential for an onslaught of more than 590 cases that could be filed in any number of district courts, though the official said the Justice Department probably would argue that the cases should be heard in a single court.

The official also acknowledged that hearings could interfere with the military's intelligence gathering operation, especially cases in which high-level detainees have been kept isolated and in which important classified intelligence is involved.

"There's definitely that potential, and we'll be arguing in lower courts for ways to minimize the interference with the intelligence gathering process," the official said. "There's enough language in the various opinions that shows there's a continuing need for deference to the military, and it's consistent with the military's need to handle detainees in certain ways."

Yesterday's rulings did not address the legality of the military tribunals that the government has planned for an initial group of six Guantanamo Bay prisoners, nor was it clear whether the ruling would affect an annual review procedure for the detainees established by the Pentagon.