US Supreme Court hearing on Guantánamo tribunals bares attacks on basic rights

The Bush administration’s assumption of extra-legal authority to imprison and prosecute so-called enemy combatants without granting them recourse to either the US courts or the protections of the Geneva Convention was challenged before the Supreme Court March 28. The high court heard oral arguments in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the lead case challenging the legality of the Bush administration’s plan to use military commissions to convict prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of purported war crimes.