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| Supreme Court to consider rights of Guantanamo inmates |
| By New York Times |
| Published: 11/11/2003 |
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Setting the stage for a historic clash between presidential and judicial authority in a time of military conflict, the Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide whether prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are entitled to access to civilian courts to challenge their open-ended detention. The court said it would resolve only the jurisdictional question of whether the federal courts can hear such a challenge and not, at this stage, whether these detentions are in fact unconstitutional. Even so, the action was an unmistakable rebuff of the Bush administration's insistence that the detainees' status was a question "constitutionally committed to the executive branch" and not the business of the federal courts, as Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson argued in opposition to Supreme Court review. In accepting the cases, the court moved from the sidelines to the center of the debate over whether the administration's response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, reflects an appropriate balance between national security and individual liberty. The two appeals the court accepted were filed on behalf of 16 detainees, 12 Kuwaitis in one group and two Britons and two Australians in the other, all seized in Afghanistan and Pakistan during United States-led operations against the Taliban in late 2001 and early 2002. They have all been held for more than 18 months without formal charges or access to any forum in which they can contest the validity of their detention. The two separate lawsuits, seeking a federal court hearing on the validity of the open-ended detention, were combined by the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. That court then ruled, in a decision affirmed by the District of Columbia U.S. Court of Appeals, that on the basis of a World War II-era Supreme Court precedent, the federal courts lack jurisdiction over the military detention of foreigners outside U.S. territory. The Supreme Court said it intended to decide the jurisdiction of the courts to hear challenges to "the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba." |
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