Guantanamo Bay goes to court

2003-11-11 08:30

Washington - The United States Supreme Court agreed to hear its first case arising from the war on terrorism, an appeal asking whether foreigners held at the US Navy base in Cuba may contest their captivity in American courts.

The case concerns more than 650 prisoners held essentially incommunicado at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The Bush administration maintains that because the men were picked up overseas on suspicion of terrorism and are being held on foreign land they may be detained indefinitely without charges or trial.

The men, mostly Muslims, have no access to lawyers or other outsiders, and do not even know they are the subject of the case the court agreed on Monday to hear, according to lawyers who have taken up their cause. Some among them may eventually be tried before military tribunals, but the administration has not said when.

The detentions are part of a global campaign against terrorism that has outraged civil liberties groups and left some US allies grumbling. The administration has gained expanded powers to investigate and detain people suspected of terrorist links, has reorganised the way the government defends US borders and has increased security at airports and other ports of entry.

The judges limited their review to the narrow but significant question of access to US courts. The case concerns only Guantanamo detainees, most of whom were picked up during the US war in Afghanistan, although the United States holds prisoners in numerous other places overseas.

Within American jurisdiction

Reacting to Monday's decision, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said: "What the US Supreme Court is going to hear is the submission that Guantanamo Bay should be within American jurisdiction for legal purposes."

"Cases have been brought to lower courts in the United States and those courts have thrown out those cases," he told Australian television's Nine Network. "We'll have to just wait and see what the Supreme Court decides."

Several US allies have complained about the open-ended detentions, and at least 40 prisoners have been returned to their home countries.

"We've been saying to the Americans, as far as the Australians are concerned, we'd accept them being taken before a military commission, provided that the military commission meets the basic principles of justice that are acceptable to us in Australia," Downer said. "It would be better that they were taken before a military commission rather than just left in limbo."

"The United States has created a prison on Guantanamo Bay that operates entirely outside the law," lawyers for four British and Australian detainees argued in asking the high court to consider the case.

"We believe that the law is on our side," White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Monday. "We've always said with the detainees that they are being treated consistently with international law and we believe that we're right in this."

- AP