Court orders due process for Guantanamo prisoners

The Supreme Court yesterday reaffirmed that U.S. courts have legal authority to rule on challenges brought by foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay. The Bush administration had insisted otherwise.

The high court also granted access to the courts to Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen captured in Afghanistan. But the president was backed some in that case, as the justices acknowledged that Congress had given him authority to hold the American as an enemy combatant.

The high court effectively side-stepped a third case — that of “dirty bomb” suspect Jose Padilla, another American held as an enemy combatant — on grounds it was improperly filed and must go back to lower courts to start again.

In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said foreign nationals at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be allowed to challenge their treatment in U.S. courts.

“Federal court jurisdiction is permitted in these cases,” said a majority opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens and joined by Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy concurred.

The dissenters were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, who essentially agreed with the Bush administration’s claims that Guantanamo lies beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

The case was brought by current and former prisoners at a massive prison built on the naval base since the September 11 attacks. The Bush administration deems some 600 suspects held there as enemy combatants.

The majority were captured in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led drive to topple the al Qaeda-supporting Taliban regime. Mr. Hamdi and Padilla also are deemed enemy combatants, though they are not held at Guantanamo.

With the exception of lengthy interrogations of men detained at the prison, the administration has afforded enemy combatants a similar set of rights to those guaranteed to prisoners of war by the Geneva Conventions.

But officials also claim enemy combatants are held outside of constitutional protections given to ordinary criminal suspects, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has announced plans to try those held at Guantanamo through military tribunals.

The Supreme Court was essentially united on the issue of whether others, particularly Americans held in places other than Guantanamo, should get the right to have their cases reviewed by the U.S. justice system.

In the Hamdi case, while separate opinions were joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg, Scalia and Stevens, all of the justices except for Justice Thomas said Mr. Hamdi had the right to a hearing before the lower courts.

“We have long since 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,” said a majority opinion, written by Justice O’Connor and joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Kennedy and Breyer.

Mr. Hamdi, who is of Saudi descent, was born in Louisiana. Having been arrested in 2001 in Afghanistan, he was shifted about by U.S. military forces, at one point being shipped to Guantanamo for detention.

When authorities learned Mr. Hamdi was born in the United States, a petition for habeas corpus, which forces the government to say why they have arrested someone, was filed on his behalf.

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