Congress gets ready to legislate Guantanamo plan B

French defendant Khaled Ben Mustapha, left, and his lawyer Jean Chevais arrive at a Paris courthouse yesterday for Ben Mustapha's trial on charges that he was recruited to fight for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Ben Mustapha and his five co-defendants were repatriated from the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay in July 2004 and March last year. PHOTO: AFP

The US Congress is prepared to craft legislation to prosecute Guantanamo war-on-terror prisoners after the government's plan for military trials was rejected by the Supreme Court, top senators said on Sunday.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told the Fox News Sunday television program that Congress could conceivably pass a new law allowing the government to try the prisoners by military commissions by September.

"The court is telling the administration go back to the Congress, work with the Congress," Graham said.

"I intend to sit down with the administration ... to come up with a process that holds terrorists accountable, to give them a fair trial, but to make sure that if they did do the things that we're alleging, they're fairly punished," he said.

"Every enemy prisoner, terrorist, is entitled to be tried in a military commission format, not civilian format," he said.

The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the administration of President George W. Bush had no authority under US laws and the Geneva Conventions to set up military tribunals without the backing of Congress to try detainees held at a US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"This has to be a process where we understand and recognize that we have to have a legitimate procedure."

Jack Reed, US Democratic senator

The ruling cast doubt on Bush's robust assertion of presidential power for national security purposes since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and bolstered Congressional claims that they have the power to regulate White House-directed programs from the handling of detainees to conducting secret surveillance on US citizens.

But Democratic Senator Jack Reed told Fox News that the minority Democrats are likely to cooperate with Republicans and the White House to pass the legislation enabling detainee trials.

"This has to be a process where we understand and recognize that we have to have a legitimate procedure -- legitimate in the eyes of the court, legitimate in the eyes of the American people, that we can move quickly to try these individuals and do justice," Reed said.

"And I think that's something that will come together in a bipartisan basis, I hope, in a deliberate and quick fashion, and do that," he said.

Graham, himself a former military prosecutor, said that Congress holds the power to establish military tribunals.

"The court is saying to the president, `you can have a military commission, but since it comes from the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a congressional statute, you have got to go back to Congress.'"

Republican Senator John McCain said on ABC television's This Week program that new legislation for Guantanamo trials would likely fall under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military legal system.

"I think that it shouldn't be exactly the same as applied to a member of the military, but it's a good framework. And I don't think that the Supreme Court said it had to be exact," he said.