In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal Monday to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former Guantanamo prisoners against former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the detainees’ lawyers charged Tuesday that the country’s highest court evidently believes that "torture and religious humiliation are permissible tools for a government to use."
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., had ruled that government officials were immune from suit because at that time it was unclear whether abusing prisoners at Guantanamo was illegal.
Channeling their predecessors in the George W. Bush administration, Obama Justice Department lawyers argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.
The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By agreeing, the court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court, which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – a statute that applies by its terms to all "persons" – did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law.
The lower court also dismissed the detainees’ claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants."
Finally, the circuit court found that, even if torture and religious abuse were illegal, defendants were immune under the Constitution because they could not have reasonably known that detainees at Guantanamo had any constitutional rights.
The circuit court ruled that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants."
That opinion was written by Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson, who was appointed to the federal circuit court by Ronald Reagan in 1986 and to the Appeals Court in 1990 by George H.W. Bush.
The British detainees spent more than two years in Guantanamo and were repatriated to Britain in 2004 with no charges ever having been filed against them.
Eric Lewis, lead attorney for the detainees, said, "It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when the Supreme Court lets stand such an inhuman decision. The final word on whether these men had a right not to be tortured or a right to practice their religion free from abuse is that they did not."
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this is why creating Gitmo was wrong. Now that it is created there is no way to clean up the mess without throwing a bunch of people in jail that Obama does not want jailed. Obama could pardon them
Obama began his presidency by saying he was not interested in looking at these legal issues.
if you "preserve" the Constitution and extend it to the foreign detainees? Then Cheney and Bush and a whole bunch of others are criminals.
There are people (mostly right-wingers) who don't want the Constitution to protect foreigners on US soil either... look at the case of the Christmas Day bomber. They even seem to be arguing that US citizens who become "terrorists" should not have Constitutional rights. At that point? The problem becomes trying to legally define terrorist.
The legal "opinions" sought by Bush were clearly just a way of breaking the law and claiming you didn't.
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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quote:Originally posted by glassman: this is why creating Gitmo was wrong. Now that it is created there is no way to clean up the mess without throwing a bunch of people in jail that Obama does not want jailed. Obama could pardon them
Obama began his presidency by saying he was not interested in looking at these legal issues.
if you "preserve" the Constitution and extend it to the foreign detainees? Then Cheney and Bush and a whole bunch of others are criminals.
There are people (mostly right-wingers) who don't want the Constitution to protect foreigners on US soil either... look at the case of the Christmas Day bomber. They even seem to be arguing that US citizens who become "terrorists" should not have Constitutional rights. At that point? The problem becomes trying to legally define terrorist.
The legal "opinions" sought by Bush were clearly just a way of breaking the law and claiming you didn't.
jmo but the Christmas Day idiot is a defector and a deserter and should be treated as a war criminal. The decision by the judge for the detainees makes perfect sense and should be upheld. "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants." - no doubt here that that makes sense. Maybe there should have been more clarification that persons ment U.S. Citizens, or persons of country which the prisoners certainly are not.
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