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World Skeptical Over Guantanamo Ruling    [

    Court's Ruling Is Likely to Force Negotiations Over Presidential Power
    By David E. Sanger and Scott Shane
    The New York Times

    Friday 30 June 2006

    Washington - The Supreme Court's Guantanamo ruling Thursday was the most significant setback yet for the administration's contention that the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath have justified one of the broadest expansions of presidential power in American history.

    President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney spent much of their first term bypassing Congress in the service of what they labeled a "different kind of war."

    Now they will almost certainly plunge into negotiations they previously spurned over the extent of the president's powers, this time in the midst of a midterm election in which Bush's wartime strategies and their consequences have emerged as a potent issue.

    The ruling bolsters those in Congress who for months have been trying to force the White House into a retreat from its claims that Bush not only has the unilateral authority as commander in chief to determine how suspected terrorists are tried, but also to set the rules for domestic wiretapping, for interrogating prisoners and for pursuing a global fight against terror that many suspect could stretch for as long as the Cold War did.

    What the court's 5-3 decision declared, in essence, was that Bush and Cheney had overreached and must now either use the established rules of courts-martial or go back to Congress - this time with vastly diminished leverage - to win approval for the military commissions that Bush argues are the best way to keep the nation safe.

    The ruling also raised major questions about the legal status of the approximately 450 men still being held at Guantanamo.

    Bush said he planned to work with Congress to "find a way forward," and there were signs of bipartisan interest in Congress in crafting legislation that would authorize new, revamped trial commissions intended to withstand judicial scrutiny.

    Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill immediately and said his committee would hold a hearing on July 11, as soon as Congress returns from the July 4 recess.

    The Defense Department insisted that the court's ruling did not undermine the government's argument that it can hold foreign suspects indefinitely and without charge as "enemy combatants."

    Privately, though, some administration officials involved in detention policy - along with many critics of that policy - were skeptical that Guantanamo would continue to operate just the same as before.

    For Bush, this is not the first such setback. The court ruled two years ago that the giant prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was not beyond the reach of U.S. courts and that prisoners there had some minimal rights. Then, last year came the overwhelming 90-9 vote in the Senate, over Cheney's strong objections, to ban "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment of prisoners. That forced Bush, grudgingly, to reach an accord with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on principles for interrogation, which are still being turned into rules.

    As seen by Bush's critics, the court has finally reined in an executive who used the 9/11 attacks as a justification - or an excuse - to tilt the balance-of-power toward the White House.

    "This is a great triumph for the rule of law and the separation of powers," said Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale. "The administration will have to go back to Congress and talk in a much more discriminating fashion about what we need to do."

    Some allies of Bush reacted bitterly Thursday, asserting that it was the court, rather than Bush, that had overreacted.

    "Nothing about the administration's solution was radical or even particularly aggressive," said Bradford Berenson, who served from 2001 to 2003 as associate White House counsel. "What is truly radical is the Supreme Court's willingness to bend to world opinion and undermine some of the most important foundations of American national security law in the middle of a war."

    At least rhetorically, the administration is giving no ground about the reach of the president's powers. Just 11 days ago, speaking in Washington, Cheney cited the responses to Watergate and the Vietnam War as examples of where he thought Congress had "begun to encroach upon the power and responsibilities of the president," and said he had come to the White House with the view that "it was important to go back and try to restore that balance."

    Since taking office, Bush and Cheney have largely tried to do so by fiat, sometimes with public declarations, sometimes with highly classified directives governing how suspects could be plucked from the battlefield or, in the case decided on Thursday, how they would be tried. The president's tone on Thursday suggested that he recognized he might now have to give ground.

    Bush said he would be taking "the findings" of the Supreme Court "very seriously."

    To some degree, the court may have helped Bush out of a political predicament. He has repeatedly said that he would like to close the detention center at Guantanamo, a recognition that the indefinite imprisonment of suspects without trial and the accusations that they have been mistreated were seriously undercutting American credibility abroad. But he set no schedule and said he was waiting for the court to rule.

    "The court really rescued the administration by taking it out of this quagmire it's been in," said Michael Greenberger, who teaches the law of counterterrorism at the University of Maryland law school.

    Now Congress, with the court's encouragement, may help the president find a way forward.

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    World Skeptical Over Guantanamo Ruling
    The Associated Press

    Friday 30 June 2006

    London - Some saw the beginning of the end for Guantanamo Bay, others a vindication for Europeans who have condemned the U.S. prison camp. Still others saw a toothless ruling that will ultimately make no difference in a climate where they believe Washington is determined to have its way.

    The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military trials for a handful of Guantanamo Bay detainees provoked a range of reactions, from jubilation to deep skepticism.

    In immediate terms, the decision will simply force the United States to look for other ways to try some 10 men charged with crimes. But some people saw wider implications - predicting it could force the Bush administration to address the continued detention of about 430 others, many held for more than four years without charge.

    "A lot of us remain skeptical of what this decision will actually accomplish because it only applies to the handful of men who have been charged and Bush has not respected past court decisions," said Moazamm Begg, 37, who was held at Guantanamo for more than two years. "That said, I'm very glad to hear the news and hope it will be the beginning of the end for many of these men."

    The camp has been a delicate diplomatic issue between the United States and Europe, where Britain's Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith said America had betrayed its own principles of freedom, liberty and justice.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel had also called for the camp's closure. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's closest ally in the war against terror, even called the camp an anomaly.

    The camp came under worldwide condemnation shortly after it opened more than four years ago, when pictures captured prisoners kneeling, shackled and being herded into wire cages. It intensified after reports of prisoner abuse, heavy-handed interrogations, hunger strikes, suicides and accounts from released detainees who described years of desperation associated with the legal limbo that has ensnared hundreds of prisoners.

    "In a diplomatic point of view, this (ruling) is going to increasingly marginalize the United States politically within those parts of the European Union that have always had misgivings about Guantanamo," said Sonya Sceats, an international human rights law expert for Chatham House, a London-based think tank. "The decision will increase pressure on the European Union for the return of nationals remaining at Guantanamo Bay."

    Some EU leaders have called for detainees to be tried in the International Criminal Court, but the Bush administration has maintained that the men - accused of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or to al-Qaida - are enemy combatants, a classification that has afforded them fewer rights under the Geneva Conventions than if they were declared prisoners of war.

    The EU has called for the camp's closure, saying that prisoners were held in a legal vacuum.

    Charles Parker, a terrorism researcher at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, said the EU is likely to applaud the Supreme Court's ruling that the military courts violated the Geneva Convention.

    "It vindicates what they have been saying all along," Parker said.

    Bob Ayers, a homeland security and intelligence expert at Chatham House, predicted the ruling will have little impact.

    "Basically I don't think the decision is going to make any difference. The United States is not going to turn all of these people loose. The EU has not said, 'Send them to us and we'll house them for you.' What is the solution?"

    Amnesty International, one of the most vocal critics of the detention center, hailed the ruling.

    "Today's Supreme Court ruling blocking the military commissions set up by President George W. Bush is a victory for the rule of law and human rights, the London-based group said.

    The former Afghan ambassador to Pakistan under the Taliban, who spent almost four years in Guantanamo before being released in September, said the facility's military tribunals were "an insult to humanity and human rights."

    "The Supreme Court must be neutral and must respect human rights. They must give justice," Abdul Salam Zaeef said in the Afghan capital, Kabul. "It was a good decision to condemn Bush's decision, which was not correct, not good."

    Lawyers for the handful of detainees who have been charged said the ruling could be the beginning of the end of the prison camp.

    "There certainly will be some fallout from this, and it may very well lead to the closing of Guantanamo Bay in the near future," said Army Maj. Tom Fleener, who represents Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al-Bahlul, a Yemeni.

    "Just by the court ruling essentially that Guantanamo is not a lawless area and that we have to comply with Geneva Conventions, it's going to change everything from how people are held to interrogation techniques that are used to the types of information they can have or can't have."

    British lawmakers said the ruling could force the United States into a firm decision on the remaining prisoners at Guantanamo.

    Mike Gapes, chairman of Britain's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, saw three options - "to release those who can be safely released, to prosecute others within properly and in accordance with U.S law and to send the rest back to their home countries, who can decide whether they should be prosecuted or not."

    Jose Diaz, spokesman for U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, welcomed the ruling.

    "The decision is a case of restoring the judiciary to its proper place in a system of checks and balances, which is essential in upholding the rule of law," he said.