Supreme Court Upholds Detention of US Terror Suspects Without Charges

CNS News | June 28 2004

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, ruled Monday that President Bush has the right to detain American citizen Yasser Hamdi and other U.S. citizens determined to be "enemy combatants" without charges or trial, but detainees can challenge their status in U.S. courts.

The court sided with the Bush administration on an important legal point raised in the war on terrorism. Throughout Hamdi's detention, the Bush administration has claimed that providing "enemy combatants" such rights undermined the president's authority to prosecute the war on terrorism and posed a threat to the security of the United States.

The Bush administration held that as "enemy combatants," the men are not entitled to the usual rights of prisoners of war determined by the Geneva Convention and are also outside of the constitutional protections afforded to other criminal suspects.

However, the court's ruling did not address the validity of the claims. The justices overturned a previous U.S. appeals court ruling that dismissed the lawsuits on the grounds that the military base was outside U.S. sovereign territory and that writs of habeas corpus were unavailable to foreign nationals outside U.S. territory.

Attorney General John Ashcroft greeted the ruling with praise.

"Detention of enemy combatants prevents them from rejoining the enemy and continuing to fight against America and its allies, and has long been upheld by our nation's courts, regardless of the citizenship of the enemy combatant," Ashcroft said.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, which filed amicus briefs in the cases, called the court's decisions "troubling."

"While the court affirmed the President's authority to declare terrorism suspects as enemy combatants, the decisions are troubling and open the door to the alarming prospect of subjecting military decisions involving the war on terrorism to the federal courts," said Sekulow in a statement

"By limiting the President's role as Commander-in-Chief, the high court interjects the federal judiciary into a process that is certain to result in chaos and confusion," he added.

"The decisions will make it much more difficult to determine who is actually running the war on terrorism - hundreds of federal judges across the nation or the President of the United States," Sekulow said.

Opponents of the Bush administration's policies also rejoiced because of the ruling's limitations on the use of presidential power.

"Today's decision marks the triumph of law over arbitrary rule," said Joseph Margulies, trial attorney at the MacArthur Justice Center and lead counsel to terror suspect Shafiq Rasul. "The detainees at Guantanamo Bay will finally have access to the basic rights that have been denied to them the past two years."

"Today's rulings are a victory for due process and a confirmation that the executive branch of government does have limitations on how it can sidestep constitutional civil liberties guarantees," said the Council on American-Islamic Relations in a statement.

"The ability to be represented by an attorney and to present evidence in open court is the hallmark of a just society and must be preserved, even in times of crisis," it added.

"The Supreme Court made clear today that the president is not above the law. The president's powers during wartime do not render him unaccountable to the courts or free him from the constraints of the Constitution," said Deborah Pearlstein, director of the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Right First.

Human Right First drafted or coordinated 14 "friend of the court" briefs in the Hamdi, Guantanamo and the Padilla cases, arguing that the president's claims were contrary to the U.S. Constitution and international law.

"Whatever the interests of national security, the idea that the President has unlimited discretion is inconsistent with the very idea of a Constitution," Pearlstein added.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that Hamdi and others "unquestionably [have] the right to counsel."

O'Connor added that the court has "made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

Justice John Paul Stevens stated for the majority that U.S. courts have authority to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.

Most of those at Guantanamo Bay were apprehended during the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom against the Taliban government in Afghanistan and against the al Qaeda network after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The first detainees arrived in January 2002. Virtually all of them have been held without being charged and have been denied access to counsel, their families and the American justice system.

Hamdi was born in Baton Rouge, La., to Saudi Arabian parents and moved back to Saudi Arabia as a young child. In November 2001, he was captured by coalition forces during the war in Afghanistan following a prison uprising by Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Qala-e-Jhangi, near the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Hamdi was initially held at Guantanamo Bay before being moved to a prison in Norfolk, Va., after it was discovered that he was an American citizen.

The Supreme Court did not yet rule in a similar case involving U.S.-born detainee Jose Padilla and in another case testing the legal rights of detainees held as enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay prison.