A bipartisan group of senators reached a compromise on Monday that would allow detainees at Guantanamo Bay to appeal the rulings of military tribunals to the federal courts.
Under the agreement, detainees who receive a punishment of 10 years in prison to death would receive an automatic appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Lesser sentences would not receive automatic review, but detainees still could petition the court to hear their case.
In addition, the 500 or so detainees at the US naval base in Cuba would be allowed to challenge in federal court the procedure under which they were labeled an "enemy combatant."
The compromise proposal allows the federal court reviews in place of the one tool the Supreme Court gave detainees last year to fight the legality of their detention -- the right to file habeas corpus petitions in the federal courts.
"Instead of unlimited lawsuits, the courts now will be looking at whether you're properly determined to be an enemy combatant and, if you're tried, whether or not your conviction followed the military commission procedures in place," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said in an interview. He said courts also will determine the constitutionality of the processes used by the Bush administration for prosecuting terror suspects and determining whether they should continue to be detained.
The Senate was set to vote on the compromise provision yesterday. Approval would mean the Senate endorses the military tribunals of President George W. Bush's administration for prosecuting suspected foreign terrorists at Guantanamo. The Supreme Court agreed just last week to review a constitutional challenge to those tribunals.
Graham sponsored the original provision the Senate added on Thursday to a defense bill on a 49-42 vote. It simply barred suspects from filing habeas corpus petitions used to fight unlawful detentions, a vote that came in response to last year's Supreme Court decision granting detainees such rights.
Human-rights groups, many Democrats and four Republicans opposed the original provision, saying it was flawed because it only allowed one very narrow appeal of a detainee's status as an "enemy combatant" to a federal court.
Democratic Senator Carl Levin called the compromise "a significant improvement" because it provides a much-needed automatic review by a federal court in death penalty cases. Also, Levin said, "We have said that the standards in the amendment will be applied in pending cases, but the amendment will not strip courts of jurisdiction over those cases."
Since that vote, Graham has worked with Levin and others to reach a compromise that would alleviate the concerns of senators of both parties and avert a showdown over the original provision.
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