A US federal district judge ruled on Wednesday that the foreigners imprisoned at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had no legal way to challenge their detentions in federal court.
Judge Richard Leon of the US District Court for the District of Columbia said the seven prisoners who brought a claim could not be granted what they had asked for: writs of habeas corpus that would have required the federal courts to consider whether they were lawfully detained.
He said the courts could not do this even though the Supreme Court ruled last June that the prisoners had the right to invoke the habeas corpus law in asking federal judges for relief. Leon made a distinction between the right to file for a habeas corpus petition before a judge and the right to obtain one.
The decision would be a major victory for the government and an equivalent setback to the detainees, but for a quirk in the way the Guantanamo detainee cases have been distributed in the federal courts.
While Leon ruled in the case of seven detainees, a separate, nearly identical lawsuit involving a different set of 54 detainees is being considered by another federal judge in the same courthouse.
In that case, Judge Joyce Hens Green is facing the same issues as Leon. She may well rule the same way, but when the cases were argued last month on consecutive days, Green appeared more amenable to the detainees' arguments than Leon. If Green rules in favor of the defendants, it would create a conflict that would not effectively provide an answer and would leave conflicting rulings for appeals courts to weigh.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not