LOS
ANGELES, July 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The U.S.
detention of prisoners from the Afghan conflict at a military outpost
in Cuba is “un-American,” human rights advocates said Wednesday,
July 10, as they sought to revive a legal challenge to the practice.
The
claim came six months after the first shackled detainees from the U.S.
war in Afghanistan were flown to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay
in Cuba where 534 men from 39 countries are now being held in a state
of legal limbo.
Rights
advocates opposing the legality and of the detentions on behalf of
some of the prisoners, who have been denied access to legal counsel,
asked an appeals court to overturn an earlier judgment that threw out
their case, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
“Our
laws prohibit holding them the way we’re holding them,” said
Stephen Yagman, the attorney for the group of clergy, lawyers and
journalists challenging the detentions. “It’s a paradox,
un-American,” he added.
Yagman
said it was “absurd in a democratic system” to hold the prisoners
incommunicado and deny them a hearing in an established U.S. court.
“These
are people who are being held perhaps in perpetuity,” Yagman told
the judges of the federal ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sitting
in the city of Pasadena, near Los Angeles.
The
appeal came after a U.S. federal judge in February threw out the first
legal challenge to the military detentions, saying the advocates had
no legal right to bring it on behalf of the prisoners with whom they
had no ties.
The
rights advocates had claimed that the detentions violated the U.S.
Constitution and the Geneva Convention on the rights of prisoners and
wanted the charges against the prisoners to be defined in a U.S.
court, AFP reported.
No
charges have been publicly filed against the detainees and they are
being held indefinitely as enemy combatants in a war whose limits defy
clear definition.
But
the U.S. government moved Wednesday to block the attempt to revive the
case, insisting that the rights advocates had no business bringing the
case as they were not linked to the detainees in any way.
“There’s
absolutely no relationship between the petitioners and the
detainees,” U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement said to the
judges. “There has to be some significant relationship.”
Only
the friends or family of the prisoners would be in any position to
challenge their detentions, he said, adding that no U.S. court had the
jurisdiction necessary to hear the advocates' case, AFP said.
“If
these individuals can litigate on behalf of the detainees, then any
individual can litigate” on their behalf, Clement argued, adding
that the detainees represented a potential threat to national security
following the September 11 terror strikes on U.S. targets.
