US vows Guantanamo trials to go on
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The top US law enforcement chief vowed Friday that military trials of "war on terror" suspects held in Guantanamo Bay would go on, as a landmark Supreme Court ruling paved the wave for a flood of appeals.
"I think it bears emphasis that the court's decision does not concern military commission trials, which will continue to proceed," US Attorney General Michael Mukasey told reporters during a visit to Tokyo.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that inmates held at the US naval base in southeastern Cuba had a right to challenge their detentions in US courts. Some of the 270 prisoners still at the remote base have been held there for years, often in solitary confinement.
The ruling was the third time in four years that the top US court has dealt a blow to the Bush administration's efforts to hold and try terrorism suspects under a special regime outside the jurisdiction of US courts.
But Muskasey said Thursday's decision had no bearing on the military commissions, set up to try "war on terror" suspects after the Guantanamo jail opened in 2002.
Instead the Supreme Court had focused on the "procedures that the Congress and the president put in place to allow enemy combatants to challenge their detention," he argued.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates meanwhile repeated his view that the Guantanamo prison should be closed, but he added the problem was what to do with the prisoners.
"I've often said, as I've told the president, and the secretary of state, we ought to close Guantanamo," Gates said at a news conference in Brussels at the end of a meeting of NATO defence ministers.
"I think that despite the fact that in many respects Guantanamo is a state of the art prison now, early reports of abuses and so on unquestionably were a black eye for the United States," he said.
"But how we deal with it, how we deal with terrorists who are trying to kill more Americans subsequent to the court's decision is something we'll have to look at," he said.
The US federal courts are now bracing for a flood of cases set to come before a dozen or so federal judges in Washington, where around 200 cases have been hold until the question of their validity was resolved.
Thursday's ruling should now give the prisoners and their legal teams the right to demand to know on what basis they are being held -- something the government has long refused to elucidate citing security concerns.
Washington judges are expected to convene in the coming days to determine how to proceed with this monumental and confusing task, because although the high court said prisoners "are entitled to a prompt habeas corpus hearing," it did not specify what legal criteria to follow.
"I expect we'll call in the lawyers from both sides to see what suggestions they have for how we can approach our task most effectively and efficiently," said Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the DC District Court.
The judges will have to define how and to what extent each detainee may have access to the charges against him -- a process that could take months.
And the judges are still unclear on what to do with detainees who are slated for release but risk torture if returned to their home countries.
The Supreme Court said in its divided 5-4 ruling that: "The laws and constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.
"Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law."
In a dissenting opinion justice Antonin Scalia wrote "America is at war with radical Islamists" and that the decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
But rights groups said the ruling effectively paved the way towards the closure of the detention facility.
"The Supreme Court decision has stripped Guantanamo of its reason for being: a law-free zone where prisoners can't challenge their detention," said Kenneth Roth, executive director at Human Rights Watch.
The decision "so undermines Guantanamo's distorted system that it should sound the camp's death knell," Roth said.
