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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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February 20th,
2007 - Guantanamo Detainees Can’t Challenge Cases in U.S. Courts |
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Guantanamo Detainees Can’t
Challenge Cases in U.S. Courts, Appellate Panel Rules By Carol D. Leonnig and Bill Brubaker Washington Post February 20, 2007; 3:42 PM A divided judicial panel
ruled this morning that about 400 foreign nationals who have been detained
for as long as five years at a military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, do
not have rights to challenge their indefinite imprisonment through the U.S.
court system. In a 2-1 decision, a panel
of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that
Congress's 2006 Military Commissions Act firmly blocked detainees from trying
to appeal the president's decision to hold them without charges and without
any promise of release. Attorneys representing the
detainees plan to appeal to the Supreme Court, and a group of Senate
Democrats introduced legislation last week that would restore some of the
detainees' rights. Many detainees, viewed by
the military as potential terrorism suspects or people with valuable
information about terrorist plots, have been seeking through pro bono lawyers
to challenge their imprisonment using a longstanding American legal right
called the writ of habeas corpus. The Supreme Court ruled last
summer in one case involving a detainee, Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, that
pending habeas cases could continue - a decision that declared the Bush
administration's original rules for trying detainees before military
commissions were unconstitutional. But four justices said the president could
seek from Congress the authority they said he lacked. At the urging of President
Bush last fall, Congress passed The Military Commissions Act, stripping
detainees at Guantanamo Bay of their right to try to bring their cases before
federal judges. In arguing the case decided
by the appeals court today, attorneys for the detainees had said the Military
Commissions Act should not apply to challenges already pending before the
court. But, given the new laws
passed by Congress, "federal courts have no jurisdiction in these
cases," Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph wrote for the panel. "Everyone who has
followed the interaction between Congress and the Supreme Court knows full
well that one of the primary purposes of the [Military Commissions Act] was
to overrule" the Supreme Court's decision to give detainees access to
federal courts, Randolph wrote. "Everyone, that is, except the
detainees. Their cases, they argue, are not covered." Randolph wrote in the
25-page opinion that the arguments by the detainees' attorneys were
"creative but not cogent." "To accept them,"
he said, "would be to defy the will of Congress." Randolph also cited
precedent-setting decisions by the Supreme Court and U.S. Court of Appeals
stating that the Constitution "does not confer rights on aliens without
property or presence within the United States." Although it is run by the
U.S. Navy, the Guantanamo base is located in Cuba, which "has
sovereignty over Guantanamo Bay," Randolph wrote. The United States occupies
the base under an indefinite lease it signed with Cuba in 1903, he wrote. Lawyers for the detainees
said they had expected the panel to rule against them, but were glad to
receive the ruling after a two-year wait so they could appeal it directly to
the Supreme Court. In a lengthy dissent to the
ruling, Judge Judith W. Rogers wrote that the Military Commissions Act did
not square with the Constitution or history, because it would suspend the
writ of habeas corpus indefinitely, even when there was no war on U.S. soil. "Suspension has been an
exceedingly rare event in the history of the United States," Rogers
wrote. "On only four occasions has Congress seen fit to suspend the
writ. These examples follow a clear pattern: Each suspension has made specific
reference to a state of 'Rebellion' or 'Invasion' and each suspension was
limited to the duration of that necessity." Rogers wrote that Congress
exceeded its own powers by attempting "to revoke federal jurisdiction
that the Supreme Court held to exist." The Military Commissions Act, she
said, "therefore has no effect on the jurisdiction of the federal courts
to consider these petitions and their related appeals." A group of Senate Democrats
introduced legislation last week that would strike down parts of the Military
Commissions Act and restore habeas corpus rights to all detainees in U.S.
custody. The bill, titled the "Restoring
the Constitution Act of 2007," would restrict the president's authority
to interpret when certain human rights standards apply to detainees, and
would limit the label "enemy combatant" to a person "who
directly participates in hostilities in a zone of active combat against the
United States" or who took part in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
2001. "I take a backseat to
no one when it comes to protecting this country from terrorists," Sen.
Christopher J. Dodd (D.-Conn.), one of the sponsors of the legislation, said
in a statement last week. "But there is a right way to do this and a
wrong way to do this. It's clear the people who perpetrated these horrendous
crimes against our country and our people have no moral compass and deserve
to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But in taking away their
legal rights, the rights first codified in our country's Constitution, we're
taking away our own moral compass, as well." Staff writer Debbi Wilgoren
contributed to this report. External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022000490.html |