Guardian: Bush faces wave of challenges to terror law

[cal04]

The Bush administration yesterday faced a raft of legal challenges to a sweeping new regime for Guantánamo that would deny court oversight to detainees in the war on terror, and would bar prosecution of US personnel for war crimes.

(snip)
However, lawyers for the 460 detainees at Guantánamo say they intend to launch legal challenges to what they described as a broad assault on fundamental human rights.

"The fact that they are denying the right of habeas corpus is so unlawful and unconstitutional that it throws us back to before King John and the Magna Carta," said Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents many of the Guantánamo detainees.

The first cases to go before the courts are expected to be challenges to the senate's denial of the right of habeas corpus to inmates at Guantánamo, some of whom have been held for five years without charge. Despite impassioned pleas from human rights advocates - and even some Republican senators - legislators voted 51 to 48 on Thursday night to bar detainees from challenging their detention in the US courts.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1884351,00.html

[Clarkie1]

1. One of the first items of business in the new Democratic Senate

ought to be overturning that provision of the law before it is overturned by the courts.

[rzemanfl]

2. Just re-enact the whole United States Code as it existed on

January 19th 2000.