The Clipboard: Guantanamo Bay Military Reviews Ruled Illegal

From an article¹:

A federal judge ruled this morning that special military reviews the Pentagon has used to determine the likely guilt of most of the 500 men held at a prison in Guantanamo Bay -- and to justify their continued imprisonment -- are illegal.

U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green, who is overseeing all of the legal claims that detainees have made challenging their imprisonment, said she cannot dismiss their claims, as the U.S. military had sought.

The decision was a legal victory for the detainees and for the civil liberties groups that filed claims on their behalf last summer, after a landmark Supreme Court decision determined that the detainees had a right to confront U.S. accusations and challenge their indefinite detention. But it is unlikely to have an immediate affect on the detainees' cases or the military prison in Cuba, because of likely appeals.

In today's decision, Green said the hearings, called Combatant Status Review Tribunals, are stacked against the detainees, and deny them crucial rights. She said some detainees may indeed be guilty and pose a danger to the United States, but the government must first give them a lawful hearing on the evidence against them.

Green said the detainees are entitled to constitutional rights, including the advice of a lawyer and a fair chance to confront the evidence against them. The judge found the reviews have largely denied those rights. (link)

Bravo, Judge Green!

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Complete text of the article, Guantanamo Bay Military Reviews Ruled Illegal, by Carol D. Leonnig

A federal judge ruled this morning that special military reviews the Pentagon has used to determine the likely guilt of most of the 500 men held at a prison in Guantanamo Bay -- and to justify their continued imprisonment -- are illegal.

U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green, who is overseeing all of the legal claims that detainees have made challenging their imprisonment, said she cannot dismiss their claims, as the U.S. military had sought.

The decision was a legal victory for the detainees and for the civil liberties groups that filed claims on their behalf last summer, after a landmark Supreme Court decision determined that the detainees had a right to confront U.S. accusations and challenge their indefinite detention. But it is unlikely to have an immediate affect on the detainees' cases or the military prison in Cuba, because of likely appeals.

In today's decision, Green said the hearings, called Combatant Status Review Tribunals, are stacked against the detainees, and deny them crucial rights. She said some detainees may indeed be guilty and pose a danger to the United States, but the government must first give them a lawful hearing on the evidence against them.

Green said the detainees are entitled to constitutional rights, including the advice of a lawyer and a fair chance to confront the evidence against them. The judge found the reviews have largely denied those rights.

Green noted in particular that there are widespread allegations, and some evidence, that detainees were tortured or abused during interrogations. She said such information makes extremely suspect any confessions of terrorist activities, upon which the military relies heavily in its process of determining that someone is an enemy combatant.

Green also criticized the military for using an illogically broad definition of "enemy combatant" in deciding to hold Muslim men from dozens of countries for as long as three years. She said after reviewing classified material for the detainees, she saw many cases in which the military presented no evidence that individuals were ever engaged in actual combat or terrorist crimes.

The Combatant Status Review Tribunals "violate long-standing principles of due process by permitting the detention of individuals based solely on their membership in anti-American organizations rather than on actual activities supporting the use of violence or harm against the United States."

The military began holding the reviews after the Supreme Court decision, which held that the military must hold some kind of hearing to determine whether someone was an enemy combatant. Usually such reviews are held on a battlefield, but the military had initially insisted it need not hold them at all.

Green also concluded that people who are members of or fighters for Afghanistan's former Taliban government are entitled to international protections provided to prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, but members of al Qaeda are not. The White House and Pentagon have repeatedly asserted that the government is not required to apply all the protections of the Geneva Convention to enemy combatants engaged in terrorism. She said the military must properly and lawfully determine which of its detainees it believes are al Qaeda or Taliban members.

Another judge, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, ruled two weeks ago on a handful of cases that the detainees claims should be dismissed and agreed with the government. The government and detainees' lawyers are expected to appeal the decisions that ruled against them, and the matter is likely to be settled by the U.S. Court of Appeals. The conflicting decisions will likely stall, to some extent, action in the detainees' cases.

Lawyers representing the government and the detainees were not immediately available for comment.

reference=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51007-2005Jan31.html