U.S. courts don't cover Guantanamo

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals panel gave the Bush administration a significant legal victory on Tuesday, ruling unanimously that prisoners from the Afghan war held in Guantanamo Bay may not challenge their detentions in federal court because the United States has no legal jurisdiction over the naval base in Cuba.

The three-judge panel said that the 16 detainees at Guantanamo who brought the lawsuit had no recourse to U.S. courts as they had never entered U.S. territory.

The ruling was another in a string of verdicts from the courts, several of them favorable to the administration, as the government's aggressive techniques in the fight against terrorism are being challenged in the federal judiciary.

The 16 plaintiffs, through their lawyers, had argued that because the United States controls the 45-square-mile base on the southeastern tip of Cuba, it had sovereignty over the base. But the judges disagreed and upheld the decision of a federal trial judge last summer.

While the lawyers argued that Guantanamo "is in essence a territory of the United States," the judges of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that was not so in strict legal terms. "Cuba -- not the United States -- has sovereignty over Guantanamo Bay," the panel said, citing the lease agreement between Cuba and United States that explicitly reserves sovereignty to Havana.

For that reason, the judges said, the prisoners "cannot seek release based on violations of the Constitution or treaties or federal law; the courts are not open to them." The prisoners sought to have U.S. courts issue writs of habeas corpus, a venerable technique to challenge someone's detention as illegal or unconstitutional.

In essence, the ruling confirms the wisdom of the decision of U.S. authorities to use Guantanamo as a place that would be out of the reach of U.S. constitutional law. Officials chose the base for that reason as well as because it was isolated from civilians and remote enough to allow authorities to control the prisoners and interrogate them.

Although the case was brought on behalf of 12 Kuwaitis, two Britons and two Australians, it applies to all of the approximately 650 prisoners being held at Guantanamo.

Copyright C 2003 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.