The Bush administration is running a “lawless enclave” insulated from judicial review at the Guantanamo Bay prison, where terror suspects are housed, a lawyer representing some of the detainees told the Supreme Court yesterday.
The government is saying, “’We don’t have to account for anyone, anywhere,’” said John Gibbons.
The case, brought by a group of former and current prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, is the first major challenge to post-September 11, 2001, detention to reach the Supreme Court.
The challenge seeks to give the prisoners — about 600 foreign nationals termed “enemy combatants” by the administration — the right to have their cases reviewed in U.S. federal courts. The majority of those held were captured in Afghanistan when the Taliban regime, which supported terror network al Qaeda, was toppled in late 2001.
The administration yesterday held firm to its position that the Guantanamo prison, built after the September 11 hijackings, is not on U.S. soil and, therefore, is outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. The federal habeas corpus law allowing prisoners to challenge their detention does not apply there, said Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson.
The notion was dismissed by Mr. Gibbons, who maintained during his oral argument that the “Guantanamo Navy base is under complete U.S. control and has been for 100 years.”
If it were outside U.S. sovereignty, it would be under Cuban sovereignty, which is simply not true, he said.
“Cuban law has never had any application inside that base. A stamp with Fidel Castro’s picture on it wouldn’t get off the base.”
The case, which originated two years ago when the families of a group of Australians, Kuwaitis and Britons at Guantanamo sued the administration in a D.C. federal court, has sparked debate. Groups on each side of the issue have filed briefs in the case, which drew a smattering of demonstrators to the steps of the Supreme Court yesterday.
Standing behind a cardboard cutout resembling prison bars and wearing an orange jumpsuit, demonstrator David Barrows, 56, declared: “Guantanamo Bay is one of the greatest crimes ever committed on this planet, and it rivals Hitler’s Germany.”
The Supreme Court justices, expected to deliver their opinions this summer, raised tough questions on both sides yesterday and appeared to be split over whether those held at Guantanamo should have access to U.S. courts.
The case was argued first in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which ruled that it lacked jurisdiction. An appeals court upheld the ruling, paving the way for the Supreme Court to look into the matter.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist seemed to agree that the Guantanamo detainees are technically not on U.S. soil, noting that habeas corpus rights have never been extended to the battlefield. However, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said that without oversight by U.S. judges, the government’s power at Guantanamo could go unchecked.
The case is the first of a series before the Supreme Court that could have a dramatic effect on how the Bush administration treats detainees in the war on terror.
Next Wednesday, the justices are set to hear challenges involving two U.S. citizens held by the administration as enemy combatants, but not at Guantanamo. Yaser Esam Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, and Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago in 2002 in a suspected ’dirty bomb’ plot.
Neither has been charged and only recently were allowed visits from attorneys. The central issue in their cases is whether an administration can detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without access to lawyers or the courts.
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