Judge: Guantánamo prisoners can fight for their freedom in court

In another important victory for liberty won by the Center for Constitutional Rights, U.S. district court judge Joyce Green struck down Bush-ordered military tribunals as illegal and inadequate to ensure people imprisoned in Guantánamo their rights under U.S. and international law.  Green handed down her 75-page ruling, an indictment of U.S. government jailing outside the legal system, on Monday February 1, yesterday.

In pleasant terms she dealt a severe blow to the Bush regime's grab for unlimited power.  The AP quoted her:

"Although this nation unquestionably must take strong action under the leadership of the commander in chief to protect itself against enormous and unprecedented threats," she wrote, "that necessity cannot negate the existence of the most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over 200 years."

"The court concludes that the petitioners have stated valid claims under the Fifth Amendment to the United State Constitution," Judge Joyce Hens Green wrote in her ruling, reported Agence France Press.  The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution states that no one under US jurisdiction can be "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Green also ruled that some of the detainees are in fact covered by the Geneva Conventions, contrary to the Bush administration's claim.

The U.S. Justice department argued that no law applied on Guantánamo: "There is no basis in the Constitution, or in history, for according aliens captured by the military outside the United States and classified as enemy combatants 'due process' rights under the Constitution, based on the mere fact that they are confined – for operational and security reasons – on foreign property that has been leased by the United States."

The unnamed prostituted legal minds or flacks who wrote that statement for the government neglected to explain that there is no basis for anything at all having to do with enemy combatants, because the classification is a creation of the Bush administration with no legal meaning whatsoever.  The novel legal concept is that if you make up a new category for people, they no longer have any rights and you can do anything you want to them, including permanent imprisonment and [
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/11/terror/m ain666097.shtml torture].

As Center for Constitutional Rights founder Michael Ratner explains in the section of his book published this week on Narco News, Guantánamo Bay and Rule by Executive Fiat, "the label does not have any legal significance."

Instead, as the Center's legal team argued before the Supreme Court, "any person detained or jailed by the United States has a right to test the legality of his or her detention in a U.S. court. And, even if somehow that broad proposition was not the case, a person detained at Guantánamo certainly has that right.  The United States exercises all power in Guantánamo, and the writ of habeas corpus should certainly apply there.  Only U.S. courts can protect people’s rights in Guantánamo.  No other country’s courts in the world can do so."

A Look Into Military Tribunals

Starting on page 46 of Green's 75 page government-censored ruling, we get a look at the operation of the special military tribunals, created by the Bush administration with no legal basis to replace real courts.  CBS legal correspondent Andrew Cohen reported an exchange between detainee Mustafa Ait Idr and the illegal court:

The presiding tribunal officer accuses Idr of associating "with a known Al Qaeda operative."  The detainee says, reasonably enough: "Give me his name."  The tribunal president says: "I do not know."  Idr understandably asks: "How can I respond to this?"  The tribunal president asks: "Did you know of anybody that was a member of al Qaeda?"  Idr says: "No, no ..."

And then Idr went to the heart of the constitutional problem, as Judge Green sees it, with an evaluation that the judge described as "piercingly accurate."

"This is something the interrogators told me a long while ago," Idr complains during his so-called trial.  "I asked the interrogators to tell me who this person was.  Then I could tell you if I might have known this person, but not if this person is a terrorist.  Maybe I knew this person as a friend.  Maybe it was a person that worked with me.  Maybe it was a person that was on my team.  But I do not know if this person is Bosnian, Indian or whatever.  If you tell me the name, then I can respond and defend myself against this accusation."

The tribunal president then responds, presumably with a straight face: "We are asking you the question and we need you to respond to what is on the unclassified summary."

A Step Back From A Police State

Cohen summarized the legal challenges, led by Ratner and the Center for Constitutional Rights, to return the rule of law (such as the right to be accused based on public evidence) and human rights to the actions of the U.S. government:

Several years ago, a federal judge and court of appeals said the men have no rights to come into American courts to seek judicial relief. Then, last June, the United States Supreme Court said that the men actually do have the right to petition the courts for help.  Then, the Bush administration argued that the detainees had a right to file papers with the courts but that the courts had no authority to actually side with the detainees even if papers were filed.

A few weeks before Carter-appointed Judge Green ruled that prisoners could challenge their indefinite detention, George W. Bush appointee Judge Richard Leon agreed with his appointer.  He decided, wrote AP reporter Gina Holland, "that while the Supreme Court gave detainees access to courts, it did not provide them the legal basis to try to win their freedom."  In the wake of the administration's legal defeat Monday, White House media handler Scott McClellan was quick to point journalists to Leon's through-the-looking-glass perversion of legal rights.  "There was another Federal Court that ruled the opposite of this latest ruling," he said.

Even for the 50 prisoners who were part of Judge Green's ruling, justice or liberty is not secure.  They, and all nearly 550 prisoners at Guantánamo interrogation camps, are still being held in inhuman conditions without ever being charged with a crime before a court of law.  And the Green and Leon rulings can both be appealed to the U.S. appeals court, and then the U.S. Supreme Court may rule again.

This remains a key victory, affirming the arguments made in Ratner and Ellen Ray's Guantánamo: What the World Should Know and the Supreme Court decision.  Ratner stated in a press release:

Judge Green’s decision is extraordinary. It reaffirms that the Guantánamo detainees cannot be imprisoned outside the law, that they have a constitutional right to a fair hearing and that evidence resulting from torture and coercion cannot be used to continue their imprisonments. The judge also found that it was illegal for the President to unilaterally determine that an entire group of the Guantánamo prisoners were not POW’s protected by the Geneva conventions. This ruling has the potential to bring the U.S. back into the fold of nations under law. It is about time.