WASHINGTON — A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Guantanamo Bay detainees can challenge their extended imprisonment in federal court and struck down as inadequate an alternative review system that Congress set up.
Repudiating a key tenet of the Bush administration’s war-on-terrorism policy, the court’s 5-4 majority concluded that foreigners held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, retain the same rights as U.S. residents to seek writs of habeas corpus. The landmark ruling will permit several hundred accused enemy combatants to see the evidence that justifies their captivity.
“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,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote. “Their access to the writ is necessary to determine the lawfulness of their status, even if, in the end, they do not obtain the relief they seek.”
The long-awaited ruling is the latest in a string of judicial defeats for the Bush administration. It marks the third time in four years that the Supreme Court has rejected the administration’s efforts to exclude foreign prisoners from traditional legal protections.
The ruling also marks the first time in U.S. history that constitutional habeas corpus rights have been extended to alien fighters detained overseas.
The ruling covers about 270 men held at Guantanamo. It doesn’t directly address the 20 or so men who now are facing trials before separate military commissions.
Dissent is sharp
The court’s conservative wing — comprising Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — dissented, at times with sharp words of its own.
“The nation will live to regret what the court has done today,” Scalia warned.
Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said the department was disappointed in the decision and would review it. Carr noted that the decision didn’t touch directly on the military commissions now underway.
In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the Guantanamo Bay detainees had a right to challenge their detentions under a statute passed by Congress. Congress responded by stripping federal courts of their jurisdiction, thereby blocking further habeas corpus petitions. The Supreme Court next ruled that the 2005 law didn’t apply retroactively to Guantanamo Bay petitions that already had been filed.
Congress returned with the Military Commissions Act of 2006, blocking all Guantanamo habeas corpus cases.
In Latin, habeas corpus means “produce the body.” A legal principle dating perhaps as far back as the 13th century, it enables prisoners to demand in court the legal justification and factual basis for their detentions.
The Bush administration contended that the men don’t have habeas corpus rights because they’re foreigners and aren’t imprisoned on U.S. soil. The United States has leased the 45-square-mile Guantanamo Bay property from Cuba since 1903, and the court noted that the United States maintains an “objective degree of control” over the overseas facility.
“Our basic charter cannot be contracted away like this,” Kennedy wrote. “The Constitution grants Congress and the president the power to acquire, dispose of and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply.”
Blow to Bush, McCain
While in Italy, Bush said: “We’ll abide by the court’s decision. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it. It’s a deeply divided court, and I strongly agree with those who dissented.”
The ruling is a blow to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and a vindication for Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who survived torture, helped shape the Military Commissions Act. Obama voted against the act.
Obama said Thursday’s opinion undercut Bush’s views on executive power, raised questions about McCain’s judgment and was “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.”
McCain commented briefly on the subject at a news conference in Boston, saying that he’d just learned of the opinion and hadn’t yet read it, but that “it obviously concerns me. These are unlawful combatants. They are not American citizens.”
What’s next?
Attorneys were preparing to demand hearings for Guantanamo detainees — some of whom are shown at left in 2002 — long held without charges. The habeas corpus hearings will force the Bush administration to reveal evidence and expose how the detainees have been treated. Some attorneys think the administration will simply start releasing detainees to avoid the potentially embarrassing hearings altogether. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill also accelerated demands to shut down the Guantanamo facility.
Source: McClatchy Newspapers
