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June 13th,
2008 - Justices Say Detainees Can Seek Release News article by the Washington Post |
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Justices Say Detainees Can
Seek Release By Robert Barnes Washington Post June 13, 2008 A deeply divided Supreme
Court yesterday ruled that terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have a
right to seek their release in federal court, delivering a historic rebuke to
the Bush administration and Congress for policies that the majority said
compromised, in the name of national security, the Constitution's guarantee
of liberty. "The laws and
Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary
times," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for a five-member majority
clearly impatient that some prisoners have been held for six years without a
hearing. The much-anticipated
decision was the fourth time the court has ruled against the administration's
ambitious attempt to create a framework for detaining and prosecuting
terrorism suspects outside the protections the U.S. legal system generally
provides. As a result of the ruling,
the approximately 270 detainees remaining at Guantanamo and their lawyers
will be able to challenge their detentions before civilian judges,
potentially forcing the government to present evidence against them and
giving them the chance to call their own witnesses. Government officials said
military commission cases against 20 detainees who have already been charged
with specific crimes could go forward, but defense lawyers said the ruling
could open the door to court challenges of that process as well. The decision brought biting
dissents from the four conservative justices, with Justice Antonin Scalia
taking the unusual step of summarizing his opposition from the bench.
"America is at war with radical Islamists," he wrote, adding that
the decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be
killed." He went on to say: "The Nation will live to regret what
the court has done today." A disappointed President
Bush was not as dramatic. "We'll abide by the court's position," he
said in Rome, in the midst of a European tour. "That doesn't mean I have
to agree with it." He also said the
administration will consider new legislation "so that we can safely say
... to the American people, 'We're doing everything we can to protect you.'
" The cases decided yesterday
were brought on behalf of 37 foreigners at Guantanamo Bay. All were captured
on foreign soil and have been designated enemy combatants. They have
proclaimed their innocence - some say they were turned over to coalition forces
for money - and for years have asked federal courts for a chance to challenge
their captivity. Their claim is to the writ
of habeas corpus, the right with roots in English law and enshrined in the
Constitution that gives a prisoner the ability to protest his confinement
before an independent judge. The Bush administration chose Guantanamo Bay as
the place to house those captured in other countries and suspected of
terrorism because it thought such a right did not extend to the base in Cuba. The administration has
sought to restrict access to federal courts by those captured in the fight
against terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Those efforts have led
to clashes between the courts, the president and Congress. Each time, the Supreme Court
has ruled against the administration, but the majority noted yesterday that
losing the battles has not kept the administration from winning the war:
After six years, none of the detainees has succeeded in getting his complaint
reviewed by a judge. "The costs of delay can
no longer be borne by those who are held in custody," wrote Kennedy,
who, in a return to the pivotal role he played last term, joined the court's
liberal justices - John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
and Stephen G. Breyer. "The detainees in these cases are entitled to a
prompt habeas corpus hearing." Kennedy made it clear that
the ruling does not mean the detainees could prevail in such hearings. He
also said the decision does not address whether the president holds the
authority to detain those thought to be enemy soldiers in the battle against
terrorism. Yesterday's decision in
Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States continued an administration
losing streak with regard to the Guantanamo detainees issue. The court ruled
in 2004 in Rasul v. Bush that federal law provided the detainees the habeas
privilege because of the unique control the U.S. government has over the land
at the Cuban base. The Republican-led Congress
responded by changing the law, and after another adverse court ruling and at
the urging of the administration, it passed the Military Commissions Act in
2006. The legislation endorsed a military system for designating detainees as
enemy combatants and for trying those charged with crimes. It also strictly
limited judicial oversight. The court yesterday first
had to decide again whether those held in Guantanamo have a right to habeas
under the Constitution, since Congress changed the law. It ruled that they
do, again because of the government's control of the land. The court acknowledged it
was the first time it had ruled that "noncitizens detained by our
Government in territory over which another country maintains de jure
sovereignty have any rights under our Constitution." Such a constitutional right
can be suspended by Congress only in times of "rebellion or
invasion," and the government did not argue that situation faced
Congress at the time it changed the law. Then, the court had to
decide whether the method devised for determining whether a detainee could be
classified as an enemy combatant - and thus indefinitely held - is an
adequate substitute for a habeas hearing before a judge. Those hearings, called
Combatant Status Review Tribunals, are held before military authorities. The
majority noted that the prisoners are not represented by lawyers and have
limited ability to present evidence on their behalf, and that there is no
mechanism for their release by a federal court reviewing the decision if the
court feels there is inadequate reason to hold them. The risk of error, Kennedy
wrote, is too great, especially when a person is detained because of an
executive order. "We hold that those procedures are not an adequate and
effective substitute for habeas corpus," he wrote. Chief Justice John G.
Roberts Jr., joined by Scalia and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A.
Alito Jr., wrote a stinging rebuttal defending what he called "the most
generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this
country as enemy combatants." He assailed the majority for
rebuffing the system "crafted" by the political branches before it
had been fully reviewed and implemented by the lower courts. The decision, he
said, "is not really about the detainees at all, but about control of
federal policy regarding enemy combatants." Scalia, in the dissent he
wrote, accused the majority of ignoring a precedent that declined to extend
habeas protection to foreign aliens, and noted it had suggested in earlier
rulings that the president and Congress work together to come up with a
substitute for such hearings. "Turns out they were
just kidding," he wrote sarcastically. Even some members of
Congress who voted for the Military Commissions Act, such as Sen. Arlen
Specter (R-Pa.), had predicted that the court would find provisions of the
law unconstitutional. But Sen. Lindsey O. Graham
(R-S.C.), a key figure in the passage of the act, denounced "what I
think is a tremendously dangerous and irresponsible ruling by the U.S.
Supreme Court. The court has conferred upon civilian judges the right to make
military decisions." Staff writer Dan Eggen in
Rome contributed to this report. External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/12/AR2008061201695.html Court ruling a
blow to Bush, but official says trials to proceed By Agence France Presse June 13, 2008 Washington - The US Supreme Court ruling that Guantanamo
prisoners can challenge their detention in US civilian courts dealt a blow to
President George W. Bush, but a senior official said Friday the military
trials will continue. "The laws and constitution
are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times,"
the court said Thursday in its historic ruling, the third blow in four years
to the government's case for trying "war on terror" suspects in
military tribunals. "Liberty and security
can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework
of the law," the court added. The court ruled by five to
four that prisoners in the US military prison in southeastern Cuba "have
the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus." President George W. Bush
said he would abide by the decision but disagreed with it, and would consider
seeking new legislation, while the Pentagon said it would examine the
implications of the ruling. "It's a Supreme Court
decision, we'll abide by the court's decision. That doesn't mean I have to
agree with it," Bush said from Rome during a European tour. But in a sign that
controversy over the detentions will carry on, US Attorney General Michael
Mukasey said Friday that the administration would continue the military
trials at the Guantanamo military base on Cuba despite the verdict. "I think it bears
emphasis that the court's decision does not concern military commission
trials, which will continue to proceed," Mukasey told reporters in
Tokyo, where he was joining talks of justice ministers from the Group of
Eight major industrial nations. He said the decision instead
focused on the "procedures that the Congress and the president put in
place to allow enemy combatants to challenge their detention." The top justice official
said he was "disappointed with the decision insofar as I understand that
it will result in hundreds of actions challenging the detention of enemy
combatants to be moved to federal district court." Thursday's ruling should now
give the prisoners and their legal teams the right to demand to know on what
basis they are being held. So far the Bush
administration has refused to unveil the body of evidence to justify the
prisoners' continued detention, saying it would endanger national security. It was not immediately clear
how Thursday's ruling would affect those 270 detainees still held in the
jail, opened in January 2002 to deal with suspects rounded up in the US
"war on terror." "Some of these
petitioners have been in custody for the past six years with no definitive
judicial determination as to the legality of their detention," wrote
Justice Anthony Kennedy in his 70-page majority ruling. In a dissenting opinion,
Chief Justice John Roberts said Congress's attempt "to balance the
security of the American people with the detainees' liberty interests has
been unceremoniously brushed aside." Dissenting justice Antonin
Scalia went further, writing that "America is at war with radical
Islamists" and that the decision "will almost certainly cause more
Americans to be killed." Two-thirds of the 800
prisoners who have passed through Guantanamo's barbed-wire gates have been
freed, mostly without charge, after several years in captivity. Australian David Hicks is
the only "war on terror" detainee to have so far been sentenced at
Guantanamo after pleading guilty in a deal which allowed him to serve out his
nine-month term at home. Trials under way include
that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered the mastermind of the September
11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States, and Osama bin Laden's driver,
Salim Hamdan. White House hopefuls
Republican John McCain and his Democratic rival Barack Obama have both said
they will close the prison, and Obama welcomed the decision saying it
rejected "the Bush administration's attempt to create a legal black hole
at Guantanamo." "This is an important
step toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule
of law and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting
habeas corpus," he said. McCain said however he was
concerned by the ruling, adding: "These are unlawful combatants. They
are not American citizens." The White House has
repeatedly said it would shut Guantanamo down, but has failed so far to come
with an alternative, or to find countries willing to take some prisoners,
such as Muslim Uighurs from northwest China, who face repression at home. The Supreme Court took up
the issue of Guantanamo inmates in 2004 and again in 2006, ruling both times that
detainees had a statutory - legal but not constitutional - right to contest
their indefinite detention. But Congress in 2006 simply
passed new legislation that forbade them from seeking justice in a federal
court until they are judged by a special military tribunal. Amnesty International said
Thursday's ruling was an "essential step forward towards the restoration
of the rule of law." Copyright © 2008 AFP. External link: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iDjPRxGyoHPRb-rIlbTMPIRxTclQ |