Guantanamo Bay

US Supreme Court rules: US- and Non-US-citizens can challenge their treatment in US courts

cc. At the end of June, the US Supreme Court ruled that prisoners held at a Navy prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be able to challenge their detention in the American courts and curbed the Bush administration‘s power to deny detainees the right to a lawyer. In the Guantanamo case the court ruled that the Cuban base – although it is outside the country - was not beyond the reach of American courts, giving the approximately 600 prisoners being held at the military prison camp the right to take their cases before an American judge. Ruling otherwise would mean declaring the Cuban base a legal no-man‘s land. The Bush administration had always argued that as „enemy combatants,“ the men were not entitled to the usual POW rights set out in the Geneva Conventions.

Michael Ratner, president of the association Lawyers for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group that has been representing the Guantanamo detainees, said that this was „a major victory for the rule of law and affirms the right of every person, citizen or non-citizen, detained by the United States to test the legality of his or her detention in a U.S. Court“. Steven R. Shapiro, director of the American Civil Liberties Union said in a written statement, that „these rulings were a strong repudiation of the administration‘s argument that its actions in the war on terrorism are beyond the rule of law and unreviewable by American courts“. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, added in a written statement that „Congress should now enact legislation that reflects the court‘s carefully balanced decisions on liberty and security. The Judiciary Committee ought to hold hearings immediately to begin the process of enacting legislation.“

„The lesson of this decision is is that there is no prison beyond the reach of domestic law,“ Joe Margulies, one of the defence lawyers, said. „The court holds emphatically that though war powers may give the US the right to seize people, it may not place them beyond the reach of legal process.“ Explaining the decision, Sandra Day O‘Connor, one of the court‘s Republican-appointed judges, said it „made clear that a state of war is not a blank cheque for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation‘s citizens“.