DETROIT (REUTERS) — A district court in Detroit ruled Tuesday that the government violated the constitutional rights of a Lebanese man arrested after the Sept. 11 attacks by subjecting him to secret detention and deportation hearings.

Judge Nancy Edmunds of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan also ruled that Rabih Haddad, the Michigan-based founder of an Islamic charity who was arrested in December 2001 for overstaying his tourist visa, should be freed within 10 days or granted new hearings that are open to public scrutiny.

Legal experts have said the Haddad case, which is likely to go before the U.S. Supreme Court, could set a precedent for hundreds of foreign men of Arab and Muslim background rounded up after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

“It is well established that aliens subject to deportation are entitled to due process protections afforded by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Edmunds wrote.

“Courts have found that an open hearing is fundamental to guarantee a fair hearing,” she said.

Her decision was in line with two earlier rulings against the government’s insistence on closed hearings in the case of Haddad. The hearings were closed under a policy unveiled after Sept. 11 that allows Attorney General John Ashcroft to declare certain cases “special-interest” proceedings that can be conducted in secret.

In one of the previous rulings, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati also ruled last month that the Bush administration had violated the constitution in Haddad’s case.

In the prevailing climate of fear after Sept. 11, Edmunds said the “special interest” designation “tainted the immigration judge’s decision whether to release Haddad into the general public” and “inevitably suggested a link between Haddad and terrorists or terrorism or, more specifically, the attacks of September 11.”

No evidence of such links had been presented by the Justice Department so far, she said.

“The government has failed to make a particularized showing that its interests in fighting terrorism are implicated in Haddad’s case,” Edmunds said.
“An open detention and removal hearing will assure the public that the government itself is honoring the very democratic principles that the terrorists who committed the atrocities of 9/11 sought to destroy,” she added.