Bush Administration Wants to Limit Detainee Ruling
..Big shock, right? If the administration had a conscience at all they would have let the ruling stand, and they would have ended the kangaroo kourts, not stepped them up to be sure they are done before bush leaves office…
By James Rowley and Robert Schmidt
U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey called on Congress to limit last month’s Supreme Court decision that gave Guantanamo Bay detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal courts.
Congress should pass legislation that bars federal judges from ordering the release into the U.S. of any unlawful enemy combatants, Mukasey said in Washington as the first war-crimes trial at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba began this week. Many detainees “pose an extraordinary threat to Americans,” the attorney general said.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on June 12 that Congress unconstitutionally denied Guantanamo detainees their constitutional right to challenge their incarceration before a federal judge. The justices invalidated part of a 2005 law that Guantanamo prisoners can only contest their enemy combatant status before a federal appeals court in Washington.
“No court should be able to order that an alien captured and detained abroad during wartime be admitted and released into the United States,” Mukasey told the American Enterprise Institute.
Nor should Congress let any detainee now petitioning a federal judge for release attend the court proceedings in the U.S., he said.
Sept. 11 Attacks
The 265 detainees at Guantanamo were seized in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Middle East countries after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. More than 500 detainees have already been released. U.S. diplomats are trying to find countries to take 70 others approved for release.
Mukasey said legislation should state that the U.S. “remains engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda” and the Taliban and may continue to detain fighters as enemy combatants.
The attorney general spoke as the first military trial of a Guantanamo detainee, Salim Hamdan, the former driver of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, began. Hamdan is accused of delivering surface-to-air missiles to fighters battling U.S. troops in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said legislative action probably won’t take place until after a new Congress and president take office next year.
“The Congress must not rush to pass yet another piece of ill-conceived legislation,” Leahy said in a statement. “The administration made this mess by seeking to avoid judicial review at all costs.”
Video Link
Mukasey proposed that Congress let judges conduct detainee hearings without bringing them to the U.S. from Guantanamo.
“To the extent detainees need to participate personally, technology should enable them to do so by video link,” he said. Transporting them to the U.S. “would require extraordinary efforts” to preserve courthouse security, said Mukasey, a former federal judge in New York.
Federal judges in Washington are reviewing the petitions under the ancient right of habeas corpus, derived from British common law and included in the U.S. Constitution, to be free of unlawful imprisonment.
Most of the cases have been consolidated for preliminary motions before U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan, who recently stepped down as the court’s chief judge. Mukasey said Congress should mandate that “one district court takes exclusive jurisdiction” over all habeas petitions.
Specific Rules
Mukasey said Congress should “establish sensible procedures” for the proceedings, including protecting classified information.
“A lot of the information supporting the detention of enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay is drawn from highly classified and sensitive intelligence,” he said. “We simply cannot afford to reveal to terrorists all that we know about them and how we acquired that information.”
Guidance to judges from Congress is needed because the Supreme Court’s decision “left many significant questions open, and it is well within the historic role and competence of Congress” and the president “to attempt to resolve them,” Mukasey said.
“Unless Congress acts, the lower federal courts will determine the specific procedural rules” for about 250 cases now pending in federal courts, he said. “With so many cases, there is a serious risk of inconsistent rulings and considerable uncertainty.”
Civil Liberties Groups
Civil liberties groups criticized Mukasey’s proposal.
It is “part of the administration’s longer-term strategy of cutting the courts out of our national security policy,” said Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national security project.
“There is no need for congressional intervention,” Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, said in a statement. Mukasey’s proposal is “a shocking attempt to drag us into years of further legal challenges and delays,” he said.
The attorney general said Congress should also make clear that the military tribunals for 20 detainees accused of war crimes should go forward at Guantanamo.
A federal judge in Washington last week rejected Hamdan’s plea to stop his trial to let the judge set ground rules for the proceedings.
“The victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks should not have to wait any longer to see those who stand accused face trial,” Mukasey said.
No trial date has been set for five defendants accused of plotting the attacks, including the self-proclaimed mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Defense Department officials have said they plan to charge as many as 80 detainees with war crimes.
To contact the reporters on this story: James Rowley in Washington at jarowley@bloomberg.net; Robert Schmidt in Washington at rschmidt5@bloomberg.net
July 21st, 2008 | Category: Boumediene v. Bush Decision, Kangaroo Kourt, Mukasey, War Tribunal, habeas corpus
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