WASHINGTON  A federal judge on Tuesday ordered a hearing into whether the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction of interrogation videotapes in 2005 violated his order that summer to preserve evidence in a lawsuit brought on behalf of 16 prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The hearing, set for Friday in Washington by District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., will be the first public forum in which government officials submit to questioning about the tapes’ destruction in November 2005. The Justice Department has asked Congress to postpone inquiries into the matter and had opposed a court hearing, saying any such actions would interfere with a preliminary investigation by the department and the Central Intelligence Agency into whether the destruction of the tapes violated the law.

“We hope to establish a procedure to review the government’s handling of evidence in our case,” said David H. Remes, a lawyer representing the 16 Guantánamo prisoners challenging their detention. “We’re grateful to Judge Kennedy for giving us that opportunity.”

There is no publicly known connection between the 16 plaintiffs, who include 14 Yemenis, one Algerian and one Pakistani, and the C.I.A. videotapes. Officials have said those tapes, recorded during harsh interrogations in 2002 and destroyed in 2005, showed two suspected Al Qaeda operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.