CHICAGO, Nov 1: A US judge has rejected government’s request to hold a closed detention hearing for a 19-year-old Indian-American charged with trying to fly to Turkey to join the Islamic State terror group.
Prosecutors have asked the court to keep Mohammed Hamzah Khan, a US citizen whose parents are originally from India, jailed pending trial, saying he poses a danger to the community and a flight risk. A detention hearing for this is scheduled for Monday.
Ahead of the detention hearing, the prosecutors had asked Magistrate Judge Susan Cox to restrict access of the public and the news media during the hearing for Khan because of “privacy concerns” involving two minors connected to the case but not charged with any wrongdoing.
In her four-page ruling yesterday, Cox said prosecutors had not met their burden to show that closing the proceedings would outweigh the “value of openness” in the courts.
The US Supreme Court has found that court proceedings should be closed only in rare circumstances —- and only when the government can “narrowly tailor” its request, she noted.
“We would be making a ‘broad and general’ finding that the public knowing the identity of uncharged minors somehow warranted the complete suppression of defendant’s detention hearing,” Cox wrote.
Prosecutors, who had filed the details of their argument under seal, had no comment on Cox’s decision. The government could appeal the ruling, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Cox said that prosecutors had told her the actions of the minors were so “inextricably intertwined” with the case that their identities could be easily discerned if the argument to keep Khan locked up pending trial were made in open court.
“Put simply, the government asserts that it cannot describe the full scope of the crime, which it will need to do for purposes of the detention hearing, without the public and press potentially piecing together their identity,” Cox said.
The judge said the concern that public attention would negatively affect the minors was “a far cry” from convincing her that disclosing the names was inappropriate.
The government request “would essentially close the entire detention hearing,” she wrote. “This is something we are not willing to do.”
The ruling comes three weeks after Cox first postponed the detention hearing for Khan amid concerns about the controversial closure request.
Khan’s attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, had blasted the attempt at secrecy, calling it “unprecedented, wrongheaded and unconstitutional.”
Khan was arrested October 4 at O’Hare International Airport as he tried to board a flight to Vienna with plans to connect to Turkey.
A criminal complaint alleged that he planned to meet in Istanbul with a contact who would take him to Islamic State locations in Iraq or Syria. (PTI)
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel