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Top court rules for Guantanamo prisoners James Vicini WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Guantanamo Bay prisoners can go before U.S. federal judges to challenge their years-long detention, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a landmark decision that delivered a stinging setback for President George W. Bush's policies. By a 5-4 vote, the nation's highest court struck down the law that Bush pushed through the Republican-led Congress in 2006 that took away the habeas corpus rights of the terrorism suspects to seek full judicial review of their detention. "We'll abide by the court's decision. That doesn't mean I have to agree with it," Bush told a news conference in Rome, where he was on a weeklong European visit. "We'll study this opinion and we'll do so ... to determine whether or not additional legislation might be appropriate."
(Article continues below) In its fourth major ruling rejecting the administration's war-on-terrorism arguments, the Supreme Court restored the detainees' rights under habeas corpus, a long-standing legal right in which individuals can challenge their imprisonment. "Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the court's 70-page majority opinion. Some detainees have been held for six years, without any definitive judicial determination of their detention, he said, adding the war on terrorism, which began Sept 11, 2001, has already become among the longest wars in American history. Kennedy said Congress had failed to create an adequate alternative for the prisoners held at the U.S. military base in Cuba to contest their detention. The 2006 law allowed for only a limited review by a U.S. appeals court in Washington of the military's designation of the prisoners as "enemy combatants."
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