Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
|
finally.
something good happened to put a term on this "kafkaesque nightmare" (i know i just saw this phrase somewhere...) that the bush people had put into motion, the war on due process which they called the "war on terror"
Quote:
Supreme court ruling on right to trial puts Guantánamo future in doubt
· Prisoners can take cases to civilian courts, justices say
· Historic decision is blow to Bush policy
* Ewen MacAskill in Washington
* The Guardian,
* Friday June 13 2008
The future of the infamous Guantánamo detention centre was thrown into doubt yesterday after the US supreme court delivered the most serious blow yet to President George Bush's policy of holding prisoners indefinitely without trial.
The justices, in a historic ruling, said the 270 prisoners, held for more than six years for alleged links with al-Qaida and the Taliban, have a constitutional right to take their cases to civilian courts on the US mainland.
Lawyers for the prisoners yesterday hailed the ruling as a vindication of their battle to have Guantánamo, in Cuba, closed.
Travelling in Rome, Bush said he did not agree with the ruling. "We'll abide by the court's decision. That doesn't mean I have to agree with it," he said.
The nine-member supreme court normally has a rightwing bent but Justice Anthony Kennedy, a maverick conservative who holds the balance of power, joined his more liberal colleagues to provide a 5-4 majority.
"The laws and constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times," Kennedy said.
At present the prisoners are classed as enemy combatants and face trial in military commissions set up by the Bush administration.
Their lawyers are expected to lodge habeas corpus petitions with federal courts as a matter of urgency, demanding their release.
Scores of cases related to the prisoners have been on hold in the federal courts pending the ruling. Federal judges, thrown into consternation by the ruling, met yesterday to decide how to proceed.
It is the third time that the supreme court has ruled against Bush on Guantánamo. On the previous two occasions, the administration and the Republican-controlled Congress changed the law to strip the detainees of their right to habeas corpus.
Bush cannot go to Congress this time because it is now controlled by the Democrats, who favour closing the camp.
The definitive nature of the ruling will make it harder for the Bush administration to manoeuvre round.
One option, though it would create an outcry, would be to close the camp and transfer the prisoners to another country, such as Afghanistan.
In the split decision, Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, sided with the dissenters. He described the existing set-up at Guantánamo as "the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants".
Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also dissented. Scalia said the nation is "at war with radical Islamists" and that the court's decision "will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens joined Kennedy to form the majority.
Souter wrote a separate opinion in which he emphasised the length of the detentions.
"A second fact insufficiently appreciated by the dissents is the length of the disputed imprisonments, some of the prisoners represented here today having been locked up for six years," he said.
Reflecting the chaos created by the ruling, a lawyer for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's one-time driver, said he will seek dismissal of the charges against Hamdan. A military judge had already delayed the military trial's start at Guantánamo to await the supreme court ruling.
Navy Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said he had no immediate information whether a hearing at Guantánamo for Omar Khadr, a Canadian charged with killing a US special forces soldier in Afghanistan, would go forward next week as planned.
Vince Warren, executive director of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents more detainees than any other group of lawyers, said he hoped the Bush administration would not react by transferring the detainees to "a black hole" in another country, such as Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.
Clive Stafford Smith, director of the London-based Reprieve, which represents 35 prisoners, said the ruling was "catastrophic" for Bush's "secret prisons policy". He added: "But the prisoners still have a long way to go."
Amnesty International wrote to the prime minister, Gordon Brown, yesterday urging him to raise with Bush on his visit to London next week the issue of three prisoners with British links.
The three prisoners are: Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian formerly resident in London; Shaker Aamer, a Saudi national formerly resident in London; and Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian who lived in Bournemouth.
Both the presidential candidates, the Democrat Barack Obama and the Republican John McCain, have said they would close Guantánamo on taking over the White House.
McCain reiterated that pledge yesterday: "I was in favour of closing Guantánamo Bay and I am still in favour of that," he said.
|
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...amo.georgebush
this ruling made me happier than the celtics did last night.
it is an indication of the extent to which the climate of hysteria the right relied upon to rationalize its policies has crumbled.
the fact of it is a reminder of how dangerous such hysteria really is.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|