Indefinite detention illegal
Published 9:00 pm Monday, June 28, 2004
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the war on terrorism does not give the government a “blank check” to hold a U.S. citizen and foreign-born terror suspects in legal limbo, a forceful denunciation of Bush administration tactics since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ruling in two cases, the high court refused to endorse a central claim of the White House: that the government has authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny access to courts or lawyers while interrogating them.
A state of war “is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in the most significant case of the day, a ruling that gives American-born detainee Yaser Esam Hamdi the right to go to federal court to fight his detention.
Separately, the court said that nearly 600 men from 42 countries held at a Navy prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can use American courts to contest their treatment. The Bush administration had argued that U.S. courts had no business second-guessing detentions of foreigners held on foreign soil.
The administration’s detention policies have rankled allies overseas and outraged civil liberties and human rights groups at home.
Deborah Pearlstein, director of the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Rights First, called Monday’s rulings a broad repudiation of the administration’s approach.
“The court said any citizen has a right to due process and that the administration’s position that it has inherent executive authority … to detain people is just wrong under the law.”
Several defense lawyers said the ruling will trigger a series of legal challenges on behalf of individual detainees.
“We will be filing hundreds of cases before the courts,” said Qatari lawyer Najeeb al-Nauimi, who belongs to a committee of defense lawyers claiming to represent more than 300 detainees. “The Supreme Court reinstated our trust in the American judicial system.”
The court declined to rule on the merits of a third case arising from the hunt for terrorists. The justices sent back to a lower court the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and a convert to Islam who is being held as an enemy combatant amid allegations he sought to detonate a radiological “dirty bomb” and blow up apartment buildings in the United States.
The administration contends that all the men at issue in Monday’s cases are enemy combatants – neither prisoners of war protected by the Geneva Conventions nor ordinary criminal suspects with automatic rights to see lawyers and know the charges against them.
All the cases dealt with rights of prisoners, an issue with added resonance since recent revelations that U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners and used harsh interrogation methods at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
Court summary
Here’s a summary of some other actions the Supreme Court took Monday:
* Ruled that terror suspect Jose Padilla improperly filed his suit in New York, rather than Charleston, S.C., where he is being held at a Navy brig; the decision overturns a lower court’s finding of proper jurisdiction and unlawful detention.
* Ruled that police’s intentional questioning of a criminal suspect twice is usually improper if the first interrogation is done without warning the suspect of his right to remain silent.
* Declined to consider whether a landmark disability law requires that disabled moviegoers get better seats than the front-row seating they’re often given in new stadium-seating theaters.
* Declined to consider an appeal of an Oklahoma ruling giving a lawsuit over the safety of minivan air bags national class-action status.
* Agreed to consider whether sick people who smoke marijuana on the advice of a doctor can be prosecuted by the federal government.
* Agreed to hear a case raising the question of when governments can tax Indian property.
Associated Press
Court summary
Here’s a summary of some other actions the Supreme Court took Monday:
* Ruled that terror suspect Jose Padilla improperly filed his suit in New York, rather than Charleston, S.C., where he is being held at a Navy brig; the decision overturns a lower court’s finding of proper jurisdiction and unlawful detention.
* Ruled that police’s intentional questioning of a criminal suspect twice is usually improper if the first interrogation is done without warning the suspect of his right to remain silent.
* Declined to consider whether a landmark disability law requires that disabled moviegoers get better seats than the front-row seating they’re often given in new stadium-seating theaters.
* Declined to consider an appeal of an Oklahoma ruling giving a lawsuit over the safety of minivan air bags national class-action status.
* Agreed to consider whether sick people who smoke marijuana on the advice of a doctor can be prosecuted by the federal government.
* Agreed to hear a case raising the question of when governments can tax Indian property.
Associated Press
