A federal judge on Friday gave the US administration 15 days to publish the names of most people being held for suspected links to the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Justice Department "shall disclose within 15 days the names of those it has arrested and detained in connection with its September 11, 2001 terrorist investigation," Judge Gladys Kessler ruled. Most of the suspects are being held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The department must also disclose the names of the detainees' attorneys within the same time frame, Kessler decided.
"The court fully understands ... the first priority of the executive branch in a time of crisis is to ensure the physical security of its citizens. By the same token, the first priority of the judicial branch must to be to ensure that our government always operates within the statutory and constitutional constraints which distinguish a democracy from a dictatorship," Kessler said in her ruling.
The judge made two exceptions in her ruling, allowing officials to honor the request of detainees who wish to remain anonymous, and enabling the department to keep secret the dates and places of the detainees' arrest.
Secret arrests are "a concept odious to a democratic society and profoundly antithetical to the bedrock values that characterize a free and open one such as ours," Kessler said.
The Justice Department said it was reviewing the ruling to evaluate "all options to protect the American public from future terrorist threats, while preserving our constitutional liberties."
"The Department of Justice believes [the] ruling impedes one of the most important federal law enforcement investigations in history, harms our efforts to bring to justice those responsible for the heinous attacks of September 11 and increases the risk of future terrorist threats to our nation," Assistant Attorney General Robert McCallum said in a statement.
While the department is "pleased" that Kessler "recognized that certain categories of information relating to the 9/11 investigation are protected from disclosure," he added that the Justice Department's criminal division and the FBI "firmly believe that the information sought by the plaintiffs, if released, could jeopardize the investigation."
The complaint had been brought against the Justice Department by 23 different groups, including the Center for National Security Studies, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Arab American Institute, Human Rights Watch and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Some 751 people were detained for immigration violations after Sept. 11. Seventy-four of them remained in custody as of June 13, according to the ruling.
In addition, 129 people were charged with committing federal crimes. Of those who remain in prison, only one has been identified: Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.
The number of people held as material witnesses has never been released, but at least 26 people are known to be detained under those terms.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon places the number of suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda members captured in Afghanistan at 534. The detainees hail from some 39 different countries.
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