Pentagon Sets Review of Detainees(does it meet USSC requirements?)

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gitmo8jul08.story

Pentagon Sets Review of Detainees
The move is in response to the Supreme Court ruling on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
By John Hendren Times Staff Writer July 8, 2004

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon plans rapid legal reviews to determine whether the 595 prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are properly being held as "enemy combatants," Bush administration officials said Wednesday.

The reviews are in response to a Supreme Court ruling last month that the detainees are entitled to legal due process.

The detainees will be notified that they can contest their status as enemy combatants, that they have a right to a "personal representative" who is a military officer but not a lawyer, and that they have a right to access U.S. federal courts.

The Pentagon is allowing the reviews — known as Combatant Status Review Tribunals — so that when detainees challenge their incarceration in federal courts, as the Supreme Court ruled they could do, "the government will be in a position to say that we fully satisfied our legal obligations," said a senior Justice Department official, who briefed reporters at the Pentagon on condition of anonymity.

After each detainee's representative interviews the detainee and decides whether the prisoner wants to contest his designation as an enemy combatant, the tribunal will have 30 days to begin hearings.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the reviews fell short of the due process called for by the high court, citing in particular the lack of legal counsel. <snip>


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/politics/08deta.html


Pentagon Will Permit Captives at Cuba Base to Appeal Status
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

WASHINGTON, July 7 - The Defense Department announced a series of steps on Wednesday that would let detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, challenge their status as enemy combatants from the war in Afghanistan and the campaign against terrorism.

The new procedure was hastily devised to head off a possible flood of litigation after a Supreme Court ruling last week requiring that the prisoners be allowed to challenge their legal status before a neutral party, like a federal court. But it was not immediately clear whether the new procedures, which will keep the process in military courts, would satisfy the court's desires in the Rasul decision, and officials who described the new approach conceded that some of the details were likely to end up in litigation.

Under the new review process, the nearly 600 Guantánamo detainees would be provided with personal representatives, but not lawyers, to help them consider their legal options. Detainees would be permitted to challenge their legal standing before a newly created Combatant Status Review Tribunal, a panel of three military officers.

The Pentagon said the officers would be neutral, because they had no stake in the fate of any particular detainee - but officials did not address the possibility that institutional loyalty might influence the tribunal. Legal advocates said the measure would do nothing to bring the continued detention of foreign nationals at Guantánamo Bay into compliance with the Constitution or international law. "The Supreme Court upheld the rule of law over unchecked executive authority,'' said Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights. "The review procedures for the detainees set up by the Department of Defense are inadequate and illegal, and they fail to satisfy the court's ruling."

Most problematic, the legal experts said, is that the process does not permit the detainees access to legal counsel. "Without access to a lawyer the Supreme Court's decision in Rasul would be meaningless,'' said Jeffrey E. Fogel, the legal director of the center, in a letter last week to the defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld. "The right to habeas corpus has always included the right to legal assistance.''<snip>

[papau]

1. Pentagon accused of evading Guantánamo ruling

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1256...

Pentagon accused of evading Guantánamo ruling

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Vikram Dodd
Thursday July 8, 2004
The Guardian

The Pentagon said last night it would create military review panels to weigh the legality of detentions at Guantánamo, in a measure that critics said falls far short of a supreme court ruling that entitles prisoners to challenge their detentions in US courts.

In the Bush administration's first response to last week's sweeping court verdict, senior military and justice department officials told reporters yesterday that the Pentagon would establish military pan els to review the detention of each of the 595 prisoners.

The four Britons in Guantánamo Bay have not been told of a ruling, the Guardian has learned.

They are among prisoners held at the prison camp without charge, trial or access to lawyers for up to 2 years.

The revelation will also put pressure on the British government to tell its citizens of the ruling when officials visit the prison camp. The Blair government risks another clash with its closest ally over the Guantánamo issue if the US refuses to allow UK officials to tell the Britons of their new rights. <snip>