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Guantanamo Detainee Families File First Lawsuit
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| Detainees in Cuba |
WASHINGTON,
Feb. 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The families of an Australian and
two Britons detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, filed a lawsuit against the U.S.
Department of Justice in a U.S. District Court, according to one of their
lawyers, news agencies reported.
"We
filed the petition today," said Bill Goodmann of the Center for
Constitutional Rights, based in New York Tuesday, February 19, adding the
families are "asking that they be released."
"The
government will have to give an explanation to the judge," he said.
This
is the first suit brought on behalf of any of the 300 prisoners captured in
Afghanistan and held at "Camp X-Ray."
The
United States said David Hicks, a 26-year-old native of Adelaide, Australia,
Asif Ikbal, 20, and Chafik Rasoul, 24, both of Tipton, England, were captured
with al-Qaeda and Taliban combatants in Afghanistan.
"If
that is the case, they are to be considered prisoners of war and subject to all
kinds of protection, including the right to see an attorney," Goodmann
said.
"We
are just assuming. We have no access to them," Goodmann said. "The
government has no basis to hold them."
Joseph
Margulies, an attorney representing Hicks, told reporters outside the courthouse
that the prohibition against "arbitrary, indefinite detention" was an
integral part of the U.S. legal system, which is what sets it apart from
terrorists, news agencies reported.
"We
distinguish ourselves from terrorists only by our commitment to the rule of
law," Margulies was quoted as saying in a report by the British daily, The
Independent, "and the law is perfectly clear that the President can't order
a person locked up indefinitely, without legal process."
U.S.
Attorney General John Ashcroft recently assigned a team of lawyers to prepare to
face this type of suit in court.
While
refusing to apply the Geneva Conventions, U.S. authorities are insisting that
the detention of prisoners from Afghanistan in Guantanamo is in accord with
international law.
Another
lawsuit, brought last month against the U.S. government by a group of civil
rights activists challenging the detention of all the prisoners, was cleared for
hearing Wednesday when a Los Angeles judge ruled that the case could be heard in
the U.S. court, news agencies reported.
The
group, called the Coalition of Clergy, Lawyers and Professors, had filed a
conflict-of-interest charge earlier this month. Among other issues, the petition
called on U.S. authorities to define the charges against the suspects and decide
if they were fighting for a government or a terrorist organization.
But
that decision has since been made, as U.S. President George W. Bush and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have affirmed that none of the detainees will be
considered prisoners of war, though some will come under the protection of the
Third Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners.
The
White House announced last week that the Convention on prisoners of war would
apply to Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan, but not to members of Osama
bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, which U.S. officials say financed the September 11
attacks in the United States that killed more than 3,000.
However,
Washington specified that even Taliban fighters would not be considered
prisoners of war. They have been classed instead as "unlawful
combatants," and Rumsfeld said last month that they therefore do not have
rights under the 1949 Geneva Convention on the laws of war, provoking
international concerns over their treatment.
International
authorities and human rights groups have challenged the categorization, citing
the Convention itself, which defines the categories of POW's and defines what is
necessary for categorizing them as such.
Article
5 reads, "Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a
belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of
the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection
of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by
a competent tribunal."
Under
the Convention, prisoners should not face demeaning or humiliating treatment and
should have freedom to exercise their religious beliefs. The Convention also
allows prisoners to offer no more than their name, rank and serial number under
interrogation.
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