Guantanamo prisoners challenge new terrorism law
UNITED STATES: Lawyers for some Guantanamo prisoners urged a U.S.
appeals court to strike down as unconstitutional a key part of the tough
anti-terrorism law that President George W. Bush signed last month.
They said the new law does not give the U.S. government the power to
arrest suspects overseas and imprison them indefinitely without any
charges and without allowing them to challenge their detention in U.S.
court.
A provision of the law unconstitutionally suspends the right under
habeas corpus, a long-standing principle of American law, of the
detainees to contest their imprisonment, they said.
The attorneys, who represented six Algerians captured in Bosnia who
have been in U.S. custody since 2002, said the authors of the U.S.
Constitution recognized that people held in prison without being charged
"must retain the right to obtain a court inquiry."
The Bush administration says the new law means the appeals court no
longer has jurisdiction to consider pending appeals filed by scores of
inmates at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The law states: "No court, justice or judge shall have jurisdiction
to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by
or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been
determined ... to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or
is awaiting such determination."
Immediately after Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006
into law, the U.S. Justice Department informed the courts they no longer
had jurisdiction over some 200 cases covering more than 400 Guantanamo
prisoners.
Washington,Thursday, Reuters.
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