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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One of four men convicted last year in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings is suing United States Attorney General John Ashcroft over the new regulation that allows the government to eavesdrop on certain attorney-client conversations in prison.

Attorneys for Mohamed al-'Owhali, 25, from Saudi Arabia, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington on Wednesday.

The suit is the first to formally challenge the post-September 11 eavesdropping authority included in the Patriot Act passed by Congress and signed by President Bush last fall.

"The whole thing is intended to chill the attorney-client relationship, and it does," said Fred Cohn, the defense attorney who filed the suit.

Life, no parole
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Case file: The U.S. Embassy Bombings Trial



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Al-'Owhali is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the federal maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado. A federal jury in Manhattan found him guilty of murdering the 213 people, including 12 Americans, who were killed in the August 7, 1998, truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

Trial testimony and evidence showed that al-'Owhali -- who had trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan -- helped prepare the bomb and rode in the passenger seat of the truck that transported it, firing stun grenades at embassy guards in an effort to help get the truck close to the embassy's rear entrance. Al-'Owhali was also convicted on numerous conspiracy, bombing and weapons charges.

The jury was deadlocked on the government's request to impose a death sentence on al-'Owhali, failing to reach a required unanimous decision, with some jurors citing the view that life in prison is a harsher punishment than a lethal injection -- and saying that they didn't want to turn al-'Owhali into a martyr.

Since his arrest and transfer to the United States in 1998, al-'Owhali has been subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), which place him under the strictest form of incarceration, keeping him in his isolated cell 23 hours a day and severely limiting his communications.

Under SAMs, which apply to no more than 20 accused or convicted terrorists nationwide, federal inmates are prohibited from passing or receiving any written or recorded communications to or from any other inmate, visitor or attorney.

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