News orgs. file complaint about access to terror proceedings

Five media organizations — the Associated Press, the New York Times Co., Dow Jones & Company Inc., the Hearst Corp. and the McClatchy Company — filed a complaint Wednesday in which they claimed they were being denied access to much of the military commission proceeding against a Canadian terror suspect.

AP has details:

Various arguments in the case of Omar Khadr at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are apparently made via e-mail — a communications channel to which the public has no access — and issues apparently are being raised in closed sessions for which no transcripts or summaries are available, the news organizations, including The Associated Press, wrote in a filing.

In addition, the filing stated, the public is not permitted access to motions and other documents submitted by the parties and ”even the existence of a motion is not currently disclosed in any publicly accessible way.”