Supreme Court: Enemy Combatants' Can Challenge Detentions

By a 6-3 vote, the justices ruled that American courts do have jurisdiction to consider the claims of the prisoners who say in their lawsuits they are being held illegally in violation of their rights.

The ruling did not address the merits of the claims, but allowed the prisoners to pursue their lawsuits, which lower courts had dismissed.

Justice John Paul Stevens (news - web sites) said for the majority that U.S. courts have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.

The justices overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that dismissed the lawsuits on the grounds that the military base was outside U.S. sovereign territory and that writs of habeas corpus were unavailable to foreign nationals outside U.S. territory.

Bush's policies have been attacked by civil liberties and human rights groups, especially after the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal and questions on whether the U.S. government has sought to condone torture during interrogations of terror suspects.

About 595 foreign nationals, designated "enemy combatants," are being held at the base in Cuba as suspected al Qaeda members or Taliban fighters.

Most of those at Guantanamo were seized during the U.S.-led campaign against the Taliban government in Afghanistan and against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America. The first detainees arrived in January 2002.

All but a handful of those at the base are being held without being charged, without access to lawyers or their families and without access to courts or a proceeding of any kind.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20040628/ts_nm/security_court_guantanamo_dc

Detainees, Combatants Can Challenge Detentions
Supreme Court Limits Scope of Presidential Wartime Powers
By Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 28, 2004; 11:58 AM

In two crucial decisions today on the scope of presidential wartime powers, the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's claim that it can hold suspected terrorists or "enemy combatants" on American soil without giving them a day in court.


The court said detainees retain their rights, at least to a legal hearing, even if they are held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Guantanamo is under U.S. control and thus appropriately within the jurisdiction of the United States courts, the high court ruled.

Nor does it matter whether the suspect is an American citizen or a foreigner, the justices said.

The president's constitutional powers, even when supported by Congress in wartime, do not include the authority to close the doors of the federal judiciary, the justices said.

The rulings were the court's most significant statement in decades on the scope of presidential war powers to deal with "enemy combatants," such as someone seized on a battlefield in Afghanistan. Those powers, under the constitution, are insufficient to close the doors of the federal courts, the high court said.

The decisions came in a package of cases all related to arrests after Sept. 11, 2001 of people deemed terrorists or enemy combatants by the government.

The cases were Hamdi et al v. Rumsfeld and Rasul et al v. Bush. The court declined on technical grounds to rule on the merits of a challenge brought by Jose Padilla, who was arrested in Chicago after a flight from Pakistan.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11657-2004Jun28.html