U.S. court rules Guantanamo prisoners cannot challenge their detention

Xinhua
Tuesday, February 20, 2007

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the hundreds of foreign prisoners held at the American military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot challenge their detention in U.S. courts.

In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said civilian courts in the United States no longer have the authority to consider whether the military is illegally holding the prisoners, as a law passed by Congress last year took away the rights of the prisoners to bring such cases and that hundreds of their lawsuits must be dismissed.

"Federal courts have no jurisdiction in these cases," Judge A. Raymond Randolph concluded for the court majority in his 25-page opinion. He was joined by Judge David B. Sentelle, and both of them were Republican appointees to the federal bench.

Barring the prisoners access to U.S. federal court was a key provision in the Military Commissions Act, which the Republican-controlled Congress passed last year and Bush signed into law last October.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the court's decision was a significant win for the administration and that the Military Commissions Act provided "sufficient and fair access" to courts for the detainees at Guantanamo.

Attorneys for the detainees said they would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last year struck down the Bush administration's original plan for trying detainees before military commissions.

Last week, a group of Senate Democrats introduced legislation that would restore habeas corpus rights to all detainees in U.S. custody and would narrowly define what is means to be an "enemy combatant" against the United States, a measure designed to challenge laws ushered in by the Republican-controlled Congress last year.

The law, tilted the "Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007," strikes at the core of the Military Commission Act of 2006 by giving detainees access to U.S. courts.

Currently there are about 395 detainees at the U.S. navel base at detention facility at Guantanamo, which was opened in January 2002, to hold terror suspects and Taliban members mainly captured during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.