Findlaw Columnist Joanne Mariner today discusses the case of Abdallah Higazy and its potential ramifications.

Higazy is the 30 year-old Egyptian grad student with a valid visa. who was detained after a security guard at the Millenium Hilton Hotel, located across the street from the World Trade Center attack site, claimed to have found an aviation radio his room on Sept. 12.

Later, the radio was claimed by an American Airlines pilot. By that time, Hgazi had been interrogated outside the presence of his lawyer and intimidated into falsely confessing the radio was his.

Mariner examines the consequences of the government's position that lawyers must be excluded from the interrogation process because "they would pose an impediment to intelligence gathering" and, get this, "undermine the interrogation dynamic."

Mariner says that the Higazy case and those of other detainees being held as material witnesses and on immigration charges "... suggests that the desired atmosphere for interrogations is one of intimidation rather than trust, and that the denial of legal counsel may result in injustice rather than the collection of accurate information."

In court documents made public last week, the judge in the Higazy case, the Hon. Jed Rakoff, ordered prosecutors to investigate the FBI's conduct of the investigation. He feels they misled him at hearings in the case.
Mariner's article is thorough, well-researched and should give all of us pause to wonder exactly what it is our federal prosecutors and the Justice Department are doing behind closed doors.