GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, March 21, (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A White House spokesperson said U.S. President George W. Bush is satisfied with new regulations stating that the trials of Al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees held by the U.S. in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be given more legal leeway than originally planned, news agencies reported.

Although a seemingly military concession between allowing defendants some rights while not bogging down the actual trials with legal procedure, detainees’ rights remain poor in comparison to those given in court martial.

So far, the U.S. has rejected the idea that the detainees be treated as prisoners of war (POW) and therefore refuses to grant them the corresponding legal rights, reported Agence-France Presse (AFP).

Under the 1949 Geneva Convention treaty, POWs have certain protections, such as the right to refuse to be interrogated and the right to be returned home when hostilities end.

According to the BBC online news service, the 300 detainees in Guantanamo Bay will be permitted to hire a civilian lawyer besides the military one assigned to them.

The death penalty can only be sentenced based on a unanimous vote of the military panel, and lesser verdicts will need a majority vote only.

The right of appeal will not go to the Supreme Court as usual, but to a three-person hearing, the BBC reported.

Also, permissible evidence will constitute anything percieved as valuable by a “reasonable person.” It will be made public and accessible to the media except those categorized as classified information.

Meanwhile, Taliban leaders have refused to hand over the 20 American and Canadian soldiers they captured during Operation Anaconda until detainees held in Guantanamo by the U.S. are released.

A Taliban leader assured Al Jazeera satellite channel that the American detainees, including two women, were being treated well as Islamic Sharia law ordains, and unlike the harsh treatment of the Guantanamo detainees by the U.S.

A spokesman for the U.S. navy base in Guantanamo Bay, General Stephen Cox, had said Monday, March 18, that suspects would be moved shortly after April 12 from Camp X-ray to “a more secure prision” called Delta camp. The camp will have the capacity to hold up to 2000 detainees.

However, the The Christian Science Monitor reported that despite U.S. attempts to “convert [Guantanamo Bay] base into a terrorist penal colony beyond the reach of US laws and constitutional protections”, U.S. government lawyers are arguing that it is not “soverign U.S. territory”.

At the core of the debate is the 1950 Supreme Court ruling that foreign nationals outside the sovereign territory of the U.S. are not entitled to key constitutional protections and guarantees of the U.S. constitution. That would include the right not to be held indefinitely without due process of law.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Axel said “these detainees are aliens, and Guantanamo lies outside the sovereign territory of the United States, and so [existing U.S. Supreme Court precedent] precludes jurisdiction in this or any other United States court."