Guantanamo detention cases must be dismissed: U.S. - Yahoo! News

Guantanamo detention cases must be dismissed: U.S. - Yahoo! News: "Mon Nov 13, 7:37 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration said on Monday that Guantanamo prisoners have no constitutional right to challenge their detention before U.S. federal judges, and the lawsuits by hundreds of detainees must be dismissed.
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In papers filed with a U.S. appeals court in Washington, Justice Department attorneys gave their most detailed argument yet that the cases must be dismissed because of the tough anti-terrorism law signed by
President George W. Bush last month.

Lawyers for the prisoners have argued the new law does not give the U.S. government the power to arrest suspects overseas and imprison them indefinitely without any charges and without allowing them to challenge their detention in U.S. court.

They say a provision of the law unconstitutionally suspends the right under habeas corpus, a long-standing principle of American law, for detainees to contest their imprisonment.

Justice Department attorneys disagreed. 'There is no constitutional habeas right for an enemy alien held outside the United States to challenge his detention,' they said. 'No actual habeas rights have been suspended.'

After Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law, the Justice Department told federal district court judges they no longer have jurisdiction over some 200 cases covering more than 400 prisoners at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Department lawyers told the appeals court the new law and a similar law, the Detainee Treatment Act that Congress approved late last year, provide 'an unprecedented level of judicial review for the claims of the enemy aliens held at Guantanamo.'"