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US votes to revoke detainees' right to appeal

Anti-US demonstrators in Sanaa on Thursday hold up pictures of Yemeni Abdul Salam al-Hela, who is being detained at Guantanamo Bay, calling for his release. PHOTO: AFP

The US Senate has allowed the Bush administration discretionary power to treat terror suspects as it wishes by voting to revoke their right to appeal their detention in civilian courts, a move that has legal experts worried.

"We will have the equivalent of `lettres de cachet,'" said attorney Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, referring to the power of French kings to send critics to the Bastille prison at will.

The Senate on Thursday added an amendment to a Defense Department budget bill that would deprive non-US citizens accused of terrorism of the right to seek redress in civil courts, ostensibly to prevent a court backlog.

"If we don't rein in prisoner abuse, we're going to lose the war, but if we don't rein in legal abuse by prisoners, we're going undermine our ability to protect ourselves," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told his colleagues.

"Do not give the terrorists, the enemy combatants, the people who blow up folks at weddings, who fly airplanes into the twin towers, the ability to sue our own troops all over the country for any and everything," he added.

Enemy combatants is a category US President George W. Bush has used to avoid holding irregular soldiers as prisoners of war, which entitles them to certain protections under the Geneva Conventions.

Graham also stood behind a measure to ban the torture of any prisoner by US personnel, after Vice President Dick Cheney lobbied Congress to allow an exception for the CIA. Graham condemned alleged abuse by CIA agents in the war on terror.

"This war is about tolerance and values, respect for human rights, this war is really about character ... If you don't practice what you preach... you're going to tarnish who you are," he said.

The amendment, adopted by 49-42, counters a Supreme Court decision last year, which established that the civilian courts were competent to hear cases of Guantanamo prisoners.

It would prevent the high court from deciding on the legality of the military tribunals put in place by the Bush administration to judge prisoners.

The Supreme Court decided last Monday to take the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver to Osama bin Laden and a Yemeni held at the controversial camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba since 2002. His lawyers have posed the most serious challenge to the Bush administration so far.

The amendment "is an effort to save the Bush administration from another embarrassment before the Supreme Court," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor.

The idea of undercutting the writ of habeas corpus, which recognizes the right of a person in detention to go before a judge, has met criticism even among conservatives.

"The writ of habeas corpus is rightly considered the glory of Anglo-American common law," said an article published in the Los Angeles Times by David Rifkin and Lee Casey, who served in Republican administrations under Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush.

"So far judicial review of the government's detention policies has not compromised its ability to defend American interests," they said.

"There is great value in having the courts affirm the basic legality of the administration's approach," they said.

Turley said the Senate's limitations on the justice system worrisome.

"The detainee cases have shown a great triumph of an independent judiciary. If there's one area we can point to with some pride since Sept. 11, it's been the willingness of judges, including Republican judges, to stand up to President Bush and say that he's wrong," he said.
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