Guantanamo detainees lose right to appeal

Democratic senators who had voted previously to prohibit abusive treatment of detainees in U.S. custody provided the margin of victory on Thursday for a Republican-backed measure that would deny prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.

Without the right of Habeas Corpus, no other right offered a detainee has any meaning. What can it mean to have a right, but no means to enforce it?

"A foreign national who is captured and determined to be an enemy combatant in the world war on terrorism has no more right to a habeas corpus appeal to our courts than did a captured soldier of the Axis powers during World War II," Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said in a statement.

The presumption here is that the detainee actually is an "enemy combatant". The right of Habeas Corpus gives the detainee the ability to challenge that designation. So what we have here is guilty until proven innocent with no means of proving innocence.

Kafka is spinning is his grave.


Nov. 11, 2005, 11:45PM
Guantanamo detainees lose right to appeal
Some Democrats cross over to help the bill pass 49-42
By ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times

WASHINGTON - Democratic senators who had voted previously to prohibit abusive treatment of detainees in U.S. custody provided the margin of victory on Thursday for a Republican-backed measure that would deny prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.

Four of the five Democrats who supported the provision to strip detainees at Guantanamo of the legal tool the Supreme Court gave them to appeal their incarcerations said Friday that they drew the line at allowing the prisoners unfettered access to U.S. courts to challenge the underlying rationale for their detention. The Senate approved the amendment to a military budget bill, 49-42.

"A foreign national who is captured and determined to be an enemy combatant in the world war on terrorism has no more right to a habeas corpus appeal to our courts than did a captured soldier of the Axis powers during World War II," Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said in a statement.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said in an interview that retired Army soldiers told him at a Veterans Day lunch in Fargo, N.D., on Friday that they supported Sen. John McCain's proposed ban on cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners but opposed giving detainees at Guantanamo Bay broader leeway to U.S. courts.

Spokesmen for Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska made similar statements.

Senate Democrats led by Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico are gearing up over the weekend to launch a counteroffensive early next week to strike or at least soften the part of the measure that bans Guantanamo prisoners from challenging their incarceration by petitioning for a writ of habeas corpus.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3455987