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WASHINGTON -- A federal judge has ordered the government to stop genital searches of Guantánamo Bay detainees who want to meet with their lawyers.
Royce Lamberth, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, on Thursday limited guards to grasping the waistband of a detainee's prison uniform trousers and shaking the pants to dislodge any contraband.
The detainees had complained that guards had recently begun touching and holding detainees' genital and anal areas during searches.
Detainee lawyers say the searches began after prisoners were told they would have to travel offsite to meet with their lawyers at another location at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba, rather than at the prison there.
The lawyers say some detainees had refused to make the trip because of the new searches.
At the Pentagon's U.S. Southern Command in Miami, where Marine Gen. John F. Kelly has oversight of the Guantánamo prison, the ruling took the military by surprise. Army Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman, said the "chain of command including Gen. Kelly will review the procedures to figure out how to accommodate the ruling."
In Dubai, long-serving Guantánamo defense attorney David Remes, returning to the U.S. from Yemen, called the judge's order "a great opinion. The government didn't just lose but actually lost ground."
The Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg contributed to this report
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