Detainee allowed to have lawyer

Calling the Trump administration’s position “disingenuous” and “troubling,” a federal judge ordered the Pentagon on Saturday to permit a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union to meet with a U.S. citizen who has been imprisoned in military custody for three months after being deemed an enemy combatant.

In a novel case pitting the individual rights of citizens against government wartime powers, Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia also ordered the Pentagon not to monitor that conversation — and told it not to transfer the man, who is being held in Iraq, until the ACLU conveys his wishes to her.

A Syrian militia captured the American citizen in mid-September and turned him over to U.S. forces as someone suspected of fighting for the Islamic State. The government has refused to identify the man, but officials familiar with the matter have said he is a dual citizen of the United States and Saudi Arabia who was born on U.S. soil to visiting Saudi parents and raised in Saudi Arabia.

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on the man’s behalf challenging his indefinite detention without charges or a lawyer. The Trump administration has asked Chutkan to dismiss the case, arguing that the rights organization lacks standing to file suit on the detainee’s behalf since it has not met with the man, has no relationship with him and does not know his wishes.

In a 12-page ruling, Chutkan sharply criticized the government’s position as “disingenuous at best” because the Defense Department is preventing lawyers for the group from conferring with the man. She also noted that the government has acknowledged that the man asked for a lawyer after being read the Miranda warning when interrogators shifted from questioning him for intelligence purposes to questioning him in hopes of gathering evidence that is admissible in a courtroom.

“Having informed the detainee of his right to counsel, and the detainee having asked for counsel, the department’s position that his request should simply be ignored until it decides what to do with the detainee and when to allow him access to counsel is both remarkable and troubling,” she wrote.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the ruling.