Original Article Plot suspect family balks at visits rules Parents claim access restricted Eric Lichtblau and James Dao New York Times Feb. 25, 2005 12:00 AM WASHINGTON - The parents of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, the American student accused of plotting the assassination of President Bush, charged Thursday that the government was restricting their access to their son by limiting what they could tell the public about their jailhouse conversations. But Justice Department officials said the jailhouse restrictions under consideration were standard in sensitive terrorism cases as a way of preventing jailed suspects from passing coded messages to outside accomplices. Prosecutors have imposed tight restrictions on about a dozen terrorism defendants since the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said, including Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a prisoner whose lawyer, Lynne F. Stewart, was convicted two weeks ago of smuggling messages out of jail. The family of Ali, who was held without charges for 20 months in Saudi Arabia before U.S. officials returned him to Virginia on Monday to face charges of providing support to terrorists, said the government asked one of their lawyers to agree to a set of tight conditions before family members could visit him in custody in Alexandria, Va. Family members said that in order to see Ali, they were told they would have to agree not to discuss with the media anything he told them, to have an agent from the FBI present for the meeting and to speak only in English. The family is balking at the restrictions. Family members have complained in the media in recent months about Ali's prolonged confinement and possible torture in Saudi Arabia. "I will not sign any papers," Omar Abu Ali, the suspect's father, said Thursday after a court hearing in a lawsuit the family has brought against the U.S. government. "They're not allowing us to see him - we haven't seen him for three years, we fought this long to get him back, and we deserve to see him." Justice Department officials said family members would be free to see Ali if they agreed to the jailhouse restrictions that are under consideration. Lawyers for Ali have been allowed to see him since he was returned to the United States and officials said their conversations have not been monitored and he was not shackled during the meetings.