[Infowarrior] - Ruling: Guantanamo Detainees Can't Challenge Their Cases in U.S. Courts

[Richard Forno]

Guantanamo Detainees Can't Challenge Their Cases in U.S. Courts, Appellate
Panel Rules

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 20, 2007; 11:28 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022000
490_pf.html

A divided judicial panel ruled this morning that hundreds of foreign
nationals detained for as long as five years at a military prison in
Guantanamo Bay 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.

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.

But the Military Commissions Act, passed by Congress at the urging of
President Bush last fall, stripped detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of
that right. The legislation was drafted after the U.S. Supreme Court
declared the Bush administration's original rules for trying detainees
before military commissions was unconstitutional.

In arguing the case decided today by the appeals court, 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."

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 delay, 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.

Staff writer Debbi Wilgoren contributed to this report.