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9th Circuit Ruling Could Lead to Court Dates for Others at Gitmo
9th Circuit generally = Pravda, so use your salt shaker. In the first ruling of its kind, a federal appeals court yesterday decided that a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba should be granted a court hearing in the United States inquiring into his detention, and raised the possibility that all the 660 or so prisoners there could likewise be given court dates in this country. But legal observers said that the 2 to 1 decision by a three-judge panel in San Francisco almost certainly will become moot after it is inevitably folded into a pending U.S. Supreme Court case that is expected to take up similar issues sometime in the spring. "Aziz! We shall be delivered from this pest hole!" "Donât get your hopes up, Mahmoud, it is only the 9th Circuit." "By Allah! They are worse than old women!" "Yes, old Palestinian women. We are doomed!" Yesterdayâs decision was written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, one of the nationâs most US based? Anyone check his papers? The decision contains powerful language raising questions about the U.S. governmentâs policy of holding the prisoners in Cuba without allowing them lawyers or access to U.S. courts, and it echoes concerns raised by human rights activists around the world. "We simply cannot accept the governmentâs position that the executive branch possesses the unchecked authority to imprison indefinitely any persons, foreign citizens included . . . without permitting such prisoners recourse of any kind to any judicial forum," Reinhardt said in the ruling, joined by one other judge. Sure we can, itâs called "war". You may have heard of it, in fact you may have been protesting one about 35 years ago, judge. Until the U.S. Supreme Court agreed last month to hear its Guantanamo case, previous federal court decisions inquiring into some of the same legal questions had established that the Guantanamo Bay captives have no right to habeas corpus hearings. Judges in the previous cases cited a 1950 Supreme Court decision establishing that foreign nationals imprisoned by the United States in foreign countries had no habeas corpus rights in U.S. courts. The U.S. government maintains that the Guantanamo Bay naval base, leased from Cuba since 1903, is on foreign soil, but the Ninth Circuit panel said the fact that the United States controls the prison there means the captives have certain rights. A dissent by one judge on the three-judge panel agreed with the government position. Some legal experts said the fact that it was the Ninth Circuit that rendered yesterdayâs decision might make it harder for the lawyers of detaineesâ families in the upcoming Supreme Court case to win over some of the conservative justices they need to prevail. "The Ninth Circuit has such a liberal reputation that yesterdayâs decision might . . . give some of the conservative justices an incentive to vote against" granting habeas corpus, said one lawyer working on the case. "I told you Mahmoud, doomed, doomed!" Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced yesterday the appointment of a military defense lawyer to represent one of the 660 detainees who might be tried before special military tribunal. The name of this prisoner, Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, had not publicly emerged before. The assignment of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift as his attorney indicates Hamdan could be one of the first to be taken before a tribunal, officials said. "Salim, is it true, you have lawyer now?" [sounds of weeping] "Shaddup, Mahmoud." Posted by: Steve White 2003-12-19 |
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