[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] denied [opinion, PDF] the government's motion on Monday to keep sealed unclassified judicial records connected to the imprisonment of Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainees. Judge Thomas Hogan ruled that the public has both First Amendment and common law rights to access the unclassified documents. The court stated that the government must either produce the unclassified factual returns or seek protected status for specific information it is attempting to withhold for each of the 107 petitioners. Hogan wrote:

Accordingly, the government's motion is denied without prejudice. On or before July 29, 2009, for each petitioner in the above-captioned cases, the government is directed to either (i) publicly file a declassified or unclassified factual return or (ii) file under seal with the petitioner’s counsel and the appropriate Merits Judge an unclassified factual return highlighting with a colored marker the exact words or lines the government seeks to be deemed protected, as well as a memorandum explaining why each word or line should be protected.