Feds Try To Halt Access To Prisoners

A group of Denver law students fighting to overturn some regulations at the Supermax prison in Colorado has found that the very rules they are fighting might bar them from continuing to represent the convicted terrorists.

After letters from three men housed in Supermax were found with terrorism suspects in Spain, federal officials issued sweeping new rules forbidding inmates from writing letters to those outside immediate family, reading the classified ads in newspapers and attending prison religious services.

The government is now arguing that the rules, called special administrative measures, or SAMs, should also forbid prison visits by University of Denver law students who are representing two of the terrorists in a civil-rights lawsuit against the government. The suit, filed in Denver's U.S. District Court, alleges that the measures violate the inmates' civil rights.

In January, Judge Wiley Y. Daniel granted the students access to Nidal Ayyad and Mahmud Abouhalima over the objection of the U.S. attorney's office.

But on Wednesday, the government asked the judge to reconsider and filed a motion to put the students' access on hold while an appeal is pending.

The Denver Post