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Guantanamo rights

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published February 24, 2007

A ruling by a federal appellate court that shuts the courthouse door on the detainees imprisoned in Guantanamo only makes it more imperative that Congress act to restore the right of habeas corpus to this population.

Regardless of the guilt or innocence of the hundreds of people imprisoned at Guantanamo - some for more than five years - it is a violation of America's fundamental principles to detain someone indefinitely upon the sole judgment of the president. Every prisoner in American custody, whether citizen or foreigner, and irrespective of where we have imprisoned them, should be given a fair chance to appeal the legitimacy of their confinement.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a provision of the Military Commissions Act, a law enacted last year in a Republican-controlled Congress, that stripped Guantanamo detainees of their habeas corpus rights. As it stands now, the nearly 400 detainees still imprisoned in Guantanamo remain in a legal black hole.

The court majority said that Congress could relieve the federal courts of jurisdiction in these cases because foreign nationals held offshore do not have habeas corpus rights. This finding rewards the Bush administration strategy of situating its prison camp for "enemy combatants" in Cuba for the primary purpose of putting the detainees out of reach of our courts.

In her dissent, Judge Judith Rogers reminded her colleagues that the U.S. Supreme Court had found that the Guantanamo detainees in fact had statutory habeas corpus rights. Rogers argued that those rights also exist beyond the statutory guarantees. Then she made a powerful case that Congress, in stripping away those rights, had not acted constitutionally.

The Suspension Clause of the Constitution allows Congress to suspend habeas corpus only in cases of invasion or rebellion. This limit has meaning, Rogers said, and Congress overstepped its authority by attempting to extinguish these rights for certain people.

This case will undoubtedly reach the Supreme Court. But Congress should not wait. Lawmakers should get behind legislation by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to restore habeas corpus rights to the Guantanamo detainees.

We know that dozens of prisoners held at Guantanamo have been released. Apparently they were not the "worst of the worst," as the administration had claimed. The mistakes that have been made highlight why due process is so vital. It provides a check against an arrogant and fallible executive branch.

[Last modified February 24, 2007, 01:07:27]