Court backs Bush on Gitmo:

[im10ashus]

By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, July 15 - In a significant victory for the Bush administration's antiterrorism policy, a federal appeals court ruled today that military commissions could resume war crimes trials of detainees at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously for the administration and against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, who is facing terrorism charges.

The panel emphatically overturned a decision on Nov. 8 by a federal district judge in Washington, James Robertson, who had ruled that in setting up military commissions to try the detainees President Bush overstepped his constitutional authority and improperly brushed aside Geneva Convention provisions on the handling prisoners of war.

"The president found that Hamdan was not a prisoner of war under the Convention," Judge A. Raymond Randolph wrote for the panel in today's ruling. "Nothing in the regulations, and nothing Hamdan argues, suggests that the president is not a 'competent authority' for these purposes."

cont'd.

http://nytimes.com/2005/07/15/politics/15cnd-gitmo.html?hp&ex=1121486400&en=0a4a0f5c7c64a707&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[K-W]

1. Link to LBN thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1630248&mesg_id=1630248

[im10ashus]

2. Thank you! n/t