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Itsdb |
02/20/07 |
Court: No habeas for Guantánamo captives
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com
The federal appeals panel in Washington, D.C., sided 2-1 with the Bush administration today, upholding an act of Congress that stripped Guantánamo Bay captives of the right to challenge their detention in lower federal courts.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia handed the White House a key victory as it moves forward with plans to hold war-crimes trials for at least three Guantánamo captives at the remote Navy base in southeast Cuba.
It also sets the stage for an early decision on whether to intervene by the U.S. Supreme Court, which has twice before sided with the detainees.
Currently, three captives who have never been charged with crimes -- a Yemeni, a Pakistani and a Chinese citizen of the Uighur minority -- are asking the justices to consider their unlawful detention lawsuits.
''Federal courts have no jurisdiction in these cases,'' declared Judge A. Raymond Randolph for himself and Judge David B. Sentelle. Two successive acts of Congress, they said, had sufficiently stripped detainees of traditional recourse to the writ of habeas corpus.
''The arguments are creative but not cogent. To accept them would be to defy the will of Congress,'' Randolph wrote for the two men, who were appointed to the court by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
The Republican-led Congress twice passed legislation that removed so-called ''enemy combatants'' of their right to challenge their detention without charge in U.S. civilian courts -- the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006...
Judge Judith W. Rogers, a Clinton appointee, dissented, saying the Pentagon had failed to create a fair substitute outside the federal courts at which captives held without charge can challenge their detention.
''While judgments of military necessity are entitled to deference by the courts and while temporary custody during wartime may be justified in order properly to process those who have been captured,'' she said, ``the executive has had ample opportunity during the past five years during which the detainees have been held at Guantánamo Bay to determine who is being held and for what reason.''
The court ruled even as members of the Democratic-led Congress are crafting new detainee legislation to restore the civilian courts' jurisdiction in such cases and to more narrowly define an enemy combatant.
In New York, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed suits on behalf of many of the prisoners, issued a condemnation of the ruling.
''This decision empowers the president to do whatever he wishes to prisoners without any legal limitation as long as he does it off shore,'' said Shayana Kadidal, managing attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative.
Added CCR executive director Vincent Warren: ``Habeas corpus is a right that was enshrined in the Magna Carta to prevent kings from indefinitely and arbitrarily detaining anyone they chose. The combined actions of the Bush administration, the previous Congress and two of the three judges today have taken us back 900 years and granted the right of kings to the president.''
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Yeah well, don't fret Mr. Warren ... I'm sure you can count on this congress to continue undermining the president and siding with terrorists. |
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