Lawyers representing nine prisoners at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, filed lawsuits in federal court on Friday arguing their detention was unlawful and unconstitutional and seeking their release.
Five cases covering nine prisoners were filed in US District Court in Washington four days after the US Supreme Court dealt a defeat to the Bush administration and ruled foreign terrorism suspects held at the base could use the US judicial system to challenge their confinement.
The lawsuits seek the release of British citizens Moazzem Begg and Feroz Abbasi, Turkish citizen Murat Kurnaz, French citizens Mourad Benchallali, Nizar Sassi and Ridouane Khalid, Jordanian Jamil El-Banna, Iraqi Bisher Al-Rawi and Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who was 15 at the time he was seized in Afghanistan and is now 17.
Without charges
The cases contend their confinement lacks any legal basis. They were filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based legal activist group representing 53 Guantanamo prisoners, and a group of affiliated lawyers.
The US holds at Guantanamo about 595 non-US citizens detained in what US President George W. Bush calls the global war on terrorism, most of them captured in Afghanistan. The US began imprisoning those suspects at the base in January 2002.
Nearly all have been held without charges or access to lawyers. Human rights groups have been among those condemning the base as "a legal black hole" and have accused the Pentagon of interrogations that amount to torture.
The lawyers asked the court to declare that "the prolonged, indefinite and restrictive detention" of the prisoners at the base is "arbitrary and unlawful," and represented deprivation of liberty without due process in violation of the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment.
Cease interrogations
The cases also contend that Bush's November, 2001 order authorizing trials of foreign terrorism suspects before special US military tribunals was unconstitutional and violated military law and international treaties.
The suits requested that the government to allow defense lawyers to meet and confer with the nine prisoners "in private and unmonitored attorney-client conversations," and to cease all interrogations of the prisoners while the case is pending.
No pentagon comment
"The Supreme Court repudiated the position of the government that they could hold people outside the rule of law. What these cases now do is apply the rule of law to the detentions in Guantanamo," said Jeffrey Fogel, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
A Pentagon spokesman, Major Michael Shavers, declined comment on the content of the lawsuits "because it's pending litigation." Shavers also said the Bush administration had not decided what actions it would take in response to the Supreme Court ruling.
"Obviously, we're going to comply with the court ruling, but there's been no decision made yet as to how we're going to do that," Shavers said.
The Center for Constitutional Rights on Thursday demanded in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld access to its clients at Guantanamo and offered to organize lawyers to provide legal counsel to other detainees.
Over a few hours under gray skies, dozens of combat planes and helicopters roar on and off the flight deck of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier, in a demonstration of US military power in some of the world’s most hotly contested waters. MH-60 Seahawk helicopters and F/A-18 Hornet jets bearing pilot call signs such as “Fozzie Bear,” “Pig Sweat” and “Bongoo” emit deafening screams as they land in the drizzle on the Nimitz, which is leading a carrier strike group that entered the South China Sea two weeks ago. US Rear Admiral Christopher Sweeney, who is commanding the group, said the tour
Sitting in a lotus position, four men weave glittering beads through gold thread on an organza sheet, carefully constructing a wedding dress that would soon wow crowds at Paris Fashion Week. For once, the French couturier behind the design, Julien Fournie, is determined to put these craftsmen in the spotlight. His new collection, which showed in Paris on Tuesday, was entirely made with fabrics from Mumbai. He said that a sort of “design imperialism” means that French fashion houses often play down that their fabrics are made outside France. “The houses which don’t admit it are perhaps afraid of losing their clientele,” Fournie
A court in Thailand sentenced a 27-year-old political activist to 28 years in prison on Thursday for posting messages on Facebook that it said defamed the country’s monarchy, while two young women charged with the same offense continued a hunger strike after being hospitalized. The court in the northern province of Chiang Rai found that Mongkhon Thirakot contravened the lese majeste law in 14 of 27 posts for which he was arrested in August last year. The law covers the king, queen and heirs, and any regent. The lese majeste law carries a prison term of three to 15 years per incident for
INSTABILITY: The country has seen a 33 percent increase in land that cultivates poppies since the military took over the government in 2021, a UN report said The production of opium in Myanmar has flourished since the military’s seizure of power, with the cultivation of poppies up by one-third in the past year, as eradication efforts have dropped and the faltering economy has led more people toward the drug trade, a UN report released yesterday showed. Last year, the first full growing season since the military wrested control of the country from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, saw a 33 percent increase in Myanmar’s cultivation area to 40,100 hectares, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime report said. “Economic, security and governance disruptions
RSS