Stifled freedoms: Like a homely dowager dripping with jewels the entire flawed, shabby and unattractive process is weighted down with layer upon layer upon layer of smothering (and deligitimizing) secrecy.

Five news organizations complained Wednesday that they are being denied access to much of the military commission proceeding against a Canadian terror suspect.

Various arguments in the case of Omar Khadr at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are apparently made via e-mail - a communications channel to which the public has no access - and issues apparently are being raised in closed sessions for which no transcripts or summaries are available, the news organizations, including The Associated Press, wrote in a filing.

In addition, the filing stated, the public is not permitted access to motions and other documents submitted by the parties and “even the existence of a motion is not currently disclosed in any publicly accessible way.”

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Besides The AP, the organizations are The New York Times Co., Dow Jones & Company Inc., The Hearst Corp. and The McClatchy Company.

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The presiding judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, has postponed a decision on whether Khadr can be tried by the military as an unlawful enemy combatant. Khadr has not entered a plea, and no trial date has been set.

The military commissions, which will be conducted at Guantanamo Bay, are the first to be conducted since World War II. It is important that the proceeding in the Khadr case not only be fair but that it be perceived as fair, and that cannot happen unless the public is able to follow and understand the events as they transpire, the five news organizations said.

The Military Commissions Act and its regulations make clear that the public’s right to access extends beyond an actual trial to all proceedings, the filing stated.

In addition, the news organizations argued, the First Amendment protects the press and the public from blocking their rights of access to information about the operation of their government. Article