WASHINGTON  - A federal judge on Monday ordered the US Justice Department to publicly reveal allegations and evidence in more than 100 pending cases of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Photo[right]:In this photo, reviewed by the U.S. military, Guantanamo detainees sit together in Camp six detention facility on Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, Sunday, May 31, 2009. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, Pool)

US District Judge Thomas Hogan ruled in favor of media and lawyers for the detainees in the US "war on terror" prison, saying that the public had a right to access unclassified documents.

Photo [left]: Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan

The Justice Department, citing security reasons, had been filing unclassified versions of the records but under seal, so that they were only available to government officials, judges and attorneys. 

Classifying evidence to serve the cause of covering up grave crimes is a horrendous and decidedly unConstitutional crime in itself.

"The issue of what to do with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay remains a source of great public interest and debate," Hogan noted in his opinion.

"Providing the public with access to the charges levied against these detainees, as detailed in the factual returns, ensures greater oversight of the detentions and these proceedings."

The New York Times, USA Today and the Associated Press had filed a motion in the case, arguing that the public had a constitutional right to access the information.

Lawyers for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the US naval base in southern Cuba were 240 men are still held, have argued that the secrecy surrounding the legal documents had hampered their efforts to adequately prepare for hearings.

Hogan's order came almost a year after the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo detainees have a right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts under the writ of habeas corpus. Monday's ruling could potentially apply to 107 habeas cases.

Hogan handed the Justice Department a July 29 deadline to publicly file unclassified records or highlight with a colored marker the specific portions of the documents it wants to keep secret in a filing to the court.

"As long as public access does not come at the expense of the litigation interests of petitioners or national security, the court believes the public has a common law right to access the returns," Hogan said.

The government has said it was unaware of how much classified information is contained in the unclassified records and requested that the court allow it to keep them protected until it can "produce versions of the returns that may be publicly disclosed," according to court documents.

Hogan said the government's demands that it alone be allowed to determine what information could be sealed "attempts to usurp the court's discretion to seal judicial records."

Funny, brings to mind "Hogan's Hero's" except now we're the Nazis.

Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan

He served as counsel to the National Commission for the Reform of Federal Criminal Laws from 1967 to 1968, and was engaged in private practice from 1968 to 1982. He has been an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and a Master of the Prettyman-Leventhal Inn of Court. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference, Chair of the Courtroom Technology Subcommittee, and served on the Board of the Federal Judicial Center.

The President of the United States was briefly granted the power to line item veto, by the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, passed by Congress in order to control "pork barrel spending" that favors a particular region rather than the nation as a whole. The line-item veto was used 11 times to strike 82 items from the federal budget by President Bill Clinton. However, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan decided on February 12, 1998 that unilateral amendment or repeal of only parts of statutes violated the U.S. Constitution. This ruling was subsequently affirmed on June 25, 1998 by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Clinton v. City of New York. 

Hogan was appointed chief judge on June 2001. According to the Washington Post, "He was called upon to help referee precedent-setting arguments over the media's right to protect anonymous administration sources, criminal probes of sitting members of Congress and the military's imprisonment of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

AFP contributed to this report.