[Ppnews] Supreme Court Blocks Trials at Guantanamo

[Political Prisoner News]

June 29, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/29/washington/29cnd-scotus.html

Supreme Court Blocks Trials at Guantanamo

By 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/john_oneil/index.html?inline=nyt-per>JOHN 
O'NEIL

The Supreme Court today delivered a sweeping 
rebuke to the Bush administration, ruling that 
the military tribunals it created to try terror 
suspects violate both American military law and the Geneva Convention.

In a 5-to-3 ruling, the justices also rejected an 
effort by Congress to strip the court of 
jurisdiction over habeas corpus appeals by 
detainees at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

And the court found that the plaintiff in the 
case, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for 
Osama bin Laden, could not be tried on the 
conspiracy charge lodged against him because 
international military law requires that 
prosecutions focus on specific acts, not broad conspiracy charges.

President Bush today said that he would comply 
with the ruling and would work with Congress "to 
have a military tribunal to hold people to 
account'' that would meet the Court's objections.
But he stressed his determination not to release 
suspected terrorists merely because the 
administration's tribunals had been rejected.

“The ruling won’t cause killers to be put out on 
the streets,’’ he said. "I'm not going to 
jeopardize the safety of the American people.''

The majority ruling was written by Justice John 
Paul Stevens, who was joined in parts of it by 
Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and 
Stephen Breyer. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion.

Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and 
Samuel J. Alito Jr. dissented. Chief Justice John 
G. Roberts Jr. did not take part in the case, 
since he had ruled in favor of the government as 
an appeals court justice last year.

Justice Thomas took the unusual step of reading 
his dissent from the bench, the first time he has 
done so in his 15 years on the court. He said 
that the ruling would "sorely hamper the 
president's ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy."
In the majority opinion, Justice Stevens declared 
flatly that "the military commission at issue 
lacks the power to proceed because its structure 
and procedure violate" both the Uniform Code of 
Military Justice, which governs the American 
military's legal system, and the Geneva Convention.

Justice Stevens rejected the administration's 
claims that the tribunals were justified both by 
President Bush's inherent powers as commander in 
chief and by the resolution passed by Congress 
authorizing the use of force after the Sept. 11. 
There is nothing in the resolution's legislative 
history "even hinting" that such an expansion of 
the president's powers was considered, he wrote.

Mr. Hamdan was captured by Afghan troops in 
November 2001 and turned over to American 
custody, and has been held at the Guantánamo Bay 
prison since 2002. His case has been seen as 
crucial to deciding the future of the several 
hundred detainees held at the camp, which has 
come under steady and increasing criticism from countries around the world.

In a ruling two years ago written by former 
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the court said that 
powers given to the administration by Congress 
for the fight against Al Qaeda did not amount to 
a "blank check," and said that detainees were 
entitled to a judicial process that met minimum 
legal standards. But it did not spell out what 
those standards entailed, and the military 
tribunals have essentially been frozen as appeals 
by detainees worked their way through the legal system.

President Bush said recently that he would like 
to close the camp, but needed to wait for the 
Hamdan ruling to see whether the military could 
proceed with its tribunals or if another form of 
trial would be have to be found for those 
detainees the administration wishes to keep in custody.

Cmdr. Charles Swift, the Navy lawyer assigned by 
the military to represent Mr. Hamdan, said at a 
televised news conference held outside the 
Supreme Court that the logical next step would be 
for Mr. Hamdan to be tried either by a 
traditional military court martial, as provided 
for under the Geneva Convention, or by a federal court.

He called today's ruling "a return to our fundamental values."

"That return marks a high-water point," Commander 
Swift said. "It shows that we can't be scared out 
of who were are, and that's a victory, folks."

Richard Stamp, a lawyer with the Washington Legal 
Foundation, which filed briefs supporting the 
government in the case, called the ruling a 
"disappointment" and an example of judges 
"clearly making it up as they go along."

Mr. Stamp said the court had ignored its own 
precedents justifying the use of tribunals 
instead of courts martial, and was substituting 
its own judgment for the president's in his role 
of commander in chief. "For the court to step 
into the war-making arena, where it has no 
expertise, is inappropriate," he said.

Mr. Stamp also said he believed the court "has 
set itself up against both the Congress and the 
president" by rejecting a law passed last year 
that stripped the Supreme Court over jurisdiction 
over appeals by Guantánamo inmates.

During arguments before the Supreme Court in 
March, a majority of the justices appeared highly 
protective of their authority over such cases.

During the arguments, Justices Antonin Scalia and 
Samuel A. Alito Jr. raised the question of 
whether the proper time for Mr. Hamdan to 
challenge the validity of the tribunal would be 
after it reached a verdict. "In the normal 
criminal suit, even if you claim that the forum 
is not properly constituted, the claim is not 
adjudicated immediately," Justice Scalia said.

But Justice Stevens today wrote that the fact 
that Mr. Hamdan has so far been barred from 
attending the tribunal's proceedings against him 
was proof that a violation already existed.


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