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The
mother of a Guantanamo detainees in front of the Supreme Court in
Washington
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WASHINGTON,
June 29 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – In a landmark
ruling, the US Supreme Court endorsed Monday, June 28, the right of
prisoners held incommunicado at the notorious US Guantanamo prison in
Cuba to challenge their captivity in American courts.
Hailed
by rights groups and families as a blow to the administration of
George W. Bush, the ruling also coupled with a separate verdict that a
US citizen should get a fair opportunity to rebut the government’s
case for detaining him/her, Reuters news agency reported.
By
a 6-3 vote, the justices ruled that American courts do have
jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention
of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities
and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.
They
overturned a US court ruling that dismissed the lawsuits on the
grounds that the military base was outside US sovereign territory and
that writs of habeas corpus were unavailable to foreign nationals
outside US territory.
There
are about 600 inmates at Guantanamo Bay, most of them have been held
for more than two years without access to lawyers or charges pressed
against them.
Most
of the detainees were captured in Afghanistan while American troops
were fighting the Taliban forces there.
Amnesty
International
condemned
in May last year the US breaches of international law in Guantanamo
under the cloak of its so-called global war on terror.
The
New York-based Human Rights Watch had further said that Bush must
promptly investigate and address
charges
of torture
of suspected the Guantanamo detainees or risk criminal prosecution.
Lawyers
Seek Access
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Hundreds
of detainees are held incommunicado in Guantanamo (AFP)
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Lawyers
for the detainees said they would use the new ruling to seek access to
their clients.
"Now
we have ability to seek immediate access to our clients," said
Barbara Olshansky, deputy director of the Center for Constitutional
Rights (CCR) which led the action that yielded the dramatic new
rulings.
She
told a news conference that the CCR already represented 10 detainees
and was in contact with the families of about 50 more, reported Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
"These
people have been incarcerated without charges for two years, some in
horrific conditions," said Olshansky.
"We
will be asking about the mental and physical state of our clients and
asking to meet them," added Joe Margulies, a CCR lawyer.
"It
is now incumbent upon the United States to demonstrate on an
individual basis, through a fair process, that they have a right to
detain these people. They have to come forward with evidence," he
stressed.
Stephen
Jakobi, of the legal pressure group Fair Trials Abroad, which has
advised families of several detainees, said the ruling was
"tremendous news".
"What
the international community could not accomplish, the United States
has itself accomplished: to bring the United States within the
province of fair trials," he told Reuters.
"What's
going to happen now, surely, is that the Bush government is going to
slowly lose all sorts of cases as the lower courts work out the
implications of these decisions. And people are going to be set
free," he said.
End
Of Guantanamo
Two
of the
freed
British detainees,
whose lawyers had initially helped bring the challenge before the US
Supreme Court, said they hoped "this decision marks the beginning
of the end of Guantanamo Bay and all it stands for".
Asif
Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul have also called for detainees to be told of
the new rights, warning that it was unlikely prisoners would be ever
told.
"We
are sure that not one of the hundreds of prisoners held unlawfully at
Guantanamo Bay will be told of today's decision by the Supreme
Court," Shafiq said in a joint statement carried by Reuters.
"For
the whole of the 26 months we were detained there, we were told, when
we asked what were our rights, 'You have no rights, this is
Cuba'," the duo recalled.
"We
ask that the US government give a public undertaking that each
detainee will be told today that he has a right of access to US courts
and can be provided with a lawyer to make that access a reality. We
know that there are many detainees who already will have slipped over
the precipice of despair."
The
father of a Briton held in the US prison told BBC News Online he was
pleased with the ruling.
"It
was what we were expecting. Our feeling was always that we are right
and the government is doing wrong," the father of Azmat Begg
said.
"It's
against democracy, human rights and the process was not being done
properly."
In
January last year, Amnesty also demanded US to resolve the
"legal
limbo"
of the detainees, slamming Washington's continuing defiance of
international law.
''Is
this how the USA defends human rights and the rule of law? This legal
limbo is a continuing violation of human rights standards which the
international community must not ignore," the rights watchdog
said.
Mohammad
Sagheer, the first Pakistani released from Guantanamo,
filed
suit
against the US government for $10.4 million in compensation for the
"torture and humiliation" he faced in detention.
