Detainees Ask Supreme Court To Guarantee Legal Rights. Why Do They Have To Ask?

[babsbunny]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-05-scotus-guantanamo_N.htm?csp=24
Detainees ask Supreme Court to guarantee legal rights
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Enlarge By Brennan Linsley, AP

A detainee sits alone inside a fenced area during his daily outside period at Guantanamo Bay prison.




WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees held more than five years without charges asked the Supreme Court Monday to step in a third time to guarantee that they can challenge their confinement in U.S. courts.
The detainees want the justices to hear their case and issue a decision before the court ends its term in early summer.

"Not only are these questions of paramount legal importance, but the extreme and worsening plight of the Guantanamo detainees make them questions of great humanitarian urgency as well," lawyers for the detainees wrote in court papers urging the justices to decide the case.

The court has twice ruled that foreigners imprisoned at the U.S. naval base in Cuba can pursue their cases in American courts, rejecting Bush administration arguments.

The latest Supreme Court appeal follows a federal appeals court ruling last month that limited detainees' legal rights. The 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld a key provision of the Military Commissions Act, which Bush pushed through Congress last year to set up a Defense Department system to prosecute terrorism suspects. Now, detainees must prove to three-officer military panels that they don't pose a terror threat.

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Separately, the justices said they would not grant quick review in the cases of two other Guantanamo detainees who have been designated by the Pentagon to face criminal charges in front of a military tribunal.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen and Omar Khadr, a Canadian, wanted a high court ruling before their military trials take place, possibly as early as this summer.

If the court agrees to hear the other detainee cases on a fast track, arguments could be held May 7, the detainees lawyers said. The justices could render a decision by the customary end of their term in late June.

The administration does not oppose expedited consideration of the appeals, the lawyers said.

The island prison at the U.S. Navy base on land leased from Cuba has become a rallying cry for international and domestic criticism of administration policy in the war on terror.

Some of the nearly 400 prisoners have been at Guantanamo since the detention facility opened more than five years ago — after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A number of detainees have committed suicide.

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. We desperately need this amendment to the US Constitution

"All persons subject to the laws of the United States are guaranteed the rights, protections and priviledges of this constitution."

But I doubt very, very much that such an amendment would ever get proposed.

[gratuitous]

2. Will the Supremes overturn a David Sentelle decision?

Let's see if Roberts and Alito will show their loyalty to the constitution or to their political overlords. Developing . . .