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US senate to weigh Guantanamo rights compromise
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-11-15 11:25
Detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison convicted by U.S. military tribunals
could have their cases reviewed by federal courts under a bipartisan compromise
offered on Monday by senators who said the chamber moved too far last week to
block inmates' access to courts.
The Senate was set to vote on Tuesday on the compromise worked out by
Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Carl Levin.
Graham sponsored the original amendment passed by the Senate on Thursday that
denied enemy combatants at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to
go to federal court to challenge their detention.
Graham of South Carolina said the compromise "corrects a flaw in my
amendment" which did not provide the right of an appeal from a military tribunal
to federal court.
The compromise also restores federal court jurisdiction over pending cases,
and provides for a court review of whether standards and procedures of the
tribunals are consistent with the U.S. Constitution.
With the compromise, there would be an automatic appeal for detainees facing
a death sentence or at least 10 years imprisonment. The U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia would determine whether it would hear cases with
less than 10-year sentences.
Civil rights advocates were alarmed when Graham's amendment cleared the
Senate last week on a 49-42 vote, saying it would strip any federal court
oversight for people the Bush administration has declared enemy combatants in
the war on terror and who are being held at Guantanamo Bay.
'SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT'
Levin said the compromise was a "significant improvement" over Graham's
original, and he would support it if an amendment pushed by Democrats to keep
detainees' habeas corpus rights is defeated in Tuesday's voting.
Levin said he preferred an amendment, sponsored by Democrat Jeff Bingaman of
New Mexico, to maintain inmates' ability under a 2004 Supreme Court decision to
use habeas corpus petitions to challenge the legality of their detention, but
with measures to stem frivolous lawsuits over detainees' living conditions.
Bingaman argued that the Bush administration has left the detainees, mostly
scooped up in the war in Afghanistan, in a legal limbo, holding them
indefinitely without charges and depriving them of protections under the laws of
war.
Graham said the Senate's support last week for his original amendment
reflected lawmakers' frustration that habeas corpus claims "were being exercised
by noncitizen foreign terrorist suspects to the point that they were flooding
our courts."
Granting enemy combatants such access to federal courts gives "an enemy
prisoner a right that an enemy prisoner has never enjoyed before in the law of
armed conflict," he said.
The Senate debate comes after the Supreme Court said last week it would
decide whether President George W. Bush had the power to create the military
commissions to put Guantanamo prisoners on trial for war crimes.
The amendments were being considered on a bill authorizing defense and
nuclear weapons programs that also contains language prohibiting the use of
torture and setting rules for interrogations of detainees.
The Bush administration has threatened to veto this bill and another bill
necessary to fund the Pentagon if they contained the language setting standards
on detainee treatment, arguing it would impede efforts to get information to
block acts of terrorism.
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