July 15, 2005

A military commission is enough...

And there will be no entree into federal court for Gitmo detainees, according to the D.C. Circuit court, as is well explained by Tung Yin.

UPDATE: Here's the NYT article:
The panel emphatically overturned a decision on Nov. 8 by a federal district judge in Washington, James Robertson, who had ruled that in setting up military commissions to try the detainees President Bush overstepped his constitutional authority and improperly brushed aside Geneva Convention provisions on the handling prisoners of war.

"The president found that Hamdan was not a prisoner of war under the Convention," Judge A. Raymond Randolph wrote for the panel in today's ruling. "Nothing in the regulations, and nothing Hamdan argues, suggests that the president is not a 'competent authority' for these purposes."...

President Bush has declared all Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters to be unlawful enemy combatants, and as such not entitled to be treated as legitimate prisoners of war.

Critics of the administration have argued that the military commission trials do not afford all the legal protections that courts-martial do. But in the appeal upheld today, the administration argued that the commission trials were fair - and not incidentally a vital part of its war on terrorism - and that since the stateless Qaeda terror network had never signed the Geneva Convention, its members were not entitled to the protections afforded prisoners of war, which include the right not to be put on trial for hostilities....

The appeals court said Congress had given the president all the authority he needed in a resolution passed just after Sept. 11, 2001. "It is impossible to see any basis for Hamdan's claim that Congress has not authorized military commission," the court ruled....

The court accepted the administration's argument that Mr. Hamdan - who has denied that he is a terrorist - does not fit the definition of "prisoner of war," and that Al Qaeda is not covered by the Geneva Convention.

1 comment:

Bruce Hayden said...

I have been saying this for quite a while now - just glad the the courts now agree with me.