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Convicted terrorist sues U.S. attorney general

Lawsuit challenges Patriot Act's eavesdropping authority

Sketch of Mohamed al-'Owhali and his attorney Fred Cohn in court in 2001.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One of four men convicted last year in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings is suing United States Attorney General John Ashcroft over the new regulation that allows the government to eavesdrop on certain attorney-client conversations in prison.

Attorneys for Mohamed al-'Owhali, 25, from Saudi Arabia, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington on Wednesday.

The suit is the first to formally challenge the post-September 11 eavesdropping authority included in the Patriot Act passed by Congress and signed by President Bush last fall.

"The whole thing is intended to chill the attorney-client relationship, and it does," said Fred Cohn, the defense attorney who filed the suit.

Life, no parole

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Al-'Owhali is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the federal maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado. A federal jury in Manhattan found him guilty of murdering the 213 people, including 12 Americans, who were killed in the August 7, 1998, truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

Trial testimony and evidence showed that al-'Owhali -- who had trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan -- helped prepare the bomb and rode in the passenger seat of the truck that transported it, firing stun grenades at embassy guards in an effort to help get the truck close to the embassy's rear entrance. Al-'Owhali was also convicted on numerous conspiracy, bombing and weapons charges.

The jury was deadlocked on the government's request to impose a death sentence on al-'Owhali, failing to reach a required unanimous decision, with some jurors citing the view that life in prison is a harsher punishment than a lethal injection -- and saying that they didn't want to turn al-'Owhali into a martyr.

Since his arrest and transfer to the United States in 1998, al-'Owhali has been subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), which place him under the strictest form of incarceration, keeping him in his isolated cell 23 hours a day and severely limiting his communications.

Under SAMs, which apply to no more than 20 accused or convicted terrorists nationwide, federal inmates are prohibited from passing or receiving any written or recorded communications to or from any other inmate, visitor or attorney.

'I don't discuss anything important'

The lawsuit contends the eavesdropping authority -- said by its supporters to preclude terrorists from sending lethal messages to cohorts outside of prison -- is unconstitutional.

"His right to communicate with his attorney is so restricted by the regulation complained of that he is deprived of his Fifth Amendment right to due process and his Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel," the suit says.

Cohn said he has not been informed of whether the government has been monitoring his telephone conversations with al-'Owhali since his client's sentencing last October.

"I take precautions in case they are. I don't discuss anything important," Cohn says.

Cohn, who is preparing motions that are due in September for al-'Owhali's appeal, says his phone calls have been of little substance, because al-'Owhali's command of English is very limited, and the government won't allow a translator.

"They claim that it's forbidden," under the SAMs, Cohn said.

Cohn also said the eavesdropping regulation makes lawyers afraid to say things to their clients.

"If I tell him something about bin Laden or something, I could be indicted."

Stewart case

Cohn referred to the government's indictment of Lynne Stewart, defense attorney for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who was a spiritual leader of the Islamic Group, a terrorist organization. Rahman, 63, is serving a life sentence in the United States for ordering a foiled plot to bomb New York City landmarks; his followers were among the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.

Stewart is charged with relaying messages about "military operations" between Rahman and his followers outside prison.

In announcing the charges against Stewart and two other men, Ashcroft said the eavesdropping authority had been invoked on Rahman but no one else under Bureau of Prisons control.

Until now, the only known lawsuits against the Patriot Act have challenged the secretive format of post-September 11 detainee hearings and keeping the names of some detainees a secret.

Although al-'Owhali now is imprisoned in Colorado and his trial was in New York, the suit is filed in Washington because that's where Ashcroft's office is at the Department of Justice. The government has 60 days to respond.