Jurists test their strength

 

 

In what will prove to be a milestone in the cases concerning Global War on Terror, the American Supreme Court, spreading out its inquest into the role of central courts at a time of war, admitted two cases testing whether federal jurists have actually say-so to thwart military officials in Iraq from handing US citizens over to the Iraqis for criminal trials and sentences.

It settled to hear the petition of one Mohammad Munaf, an Iraqi-American with dual citizenship, who was convicted in Iraq for his alleged role in the 2005 abduction of three Romanian journalists. He is awaiting the death sentence.

The Federal Court also listened to urgings on behalf of a group of terrorism suspects jailed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This case is also expected to chalk out the say-so of US courts over captives held outside the US. As it argues in the cases brought by detainees at Guantánamo Bay, the Bush administration persists that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to grant petitions for habeas corpus filed by civilians seeking release from military custody in Iraq.

Reacting to TSI on the judgement, noted legal expert from US and a onetime member of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, Dawn Johnsen said: “The Supreme Court should take this opportunity finally to declare that the detainees the US government has been holding at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years have a constitutional right to habeas corpus review. It is long past time for the Court to require the Bush Administration to comply with this constitutional safeguard.”

Ironically, the Supreme Court has twice ruled against the Bush administration’s guiding principles on Guantanamo prisoners, but Congress then passed laws to keep the cases out of US courts.

The United States has about 160,000 troops in Iraq after it led the invasion in 2003. The US government has been facing a barrage of criticism from European allies and human rights groups and activists the world over for holding terrorism suspects for years without charge at Guantanamo Bay and in other locations.