Legal Status of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay
Introduction for Thursday's presentation (March 29, 2007):
The legal status of the detainees being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is still up in the air. The United States Government originally made the decision to hold suspected terrorists at Guantanamo because they believed they could argue that because the base was not located on United States soil that the nation’s laws and jurisdiction did not apply to the base. The Bush administration also holds that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to suspected terrorists because they are not soldiers sanctioned by any government and are actually “enemy combatants.”
There are three important Supreme Court cases that deal with the legal status of the detainment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay: Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Rasul v. Bush, and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The last case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, declared that it was illegal to try the prisoners using Military Commissions (trials in front of military judges). In January of 2004, the both houses of Parliament in the United Kingdom wrote an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of granting the prisoner’s in Guantanamo access to the U.S. court system. The brief argued that U.S. government’s behavior was contrary to the nation’s “commitment to the rule of law and its international obligations.” International organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have declared the United State’s detainment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay to go against international law and the Geneva Conventions.
The United Nations, in a report released in February 2006, called for the release or trial of prisoners at Guantanamo, but their ruling has been ignored by the U.S. This study was already discussed in Lauren’s presentation regarding the prison conditions at Guantanamo Bay, so I don’t think it is really necessary to reread it.
Readings:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/guantanamo-bay_legal.htm (just read the first section regarding the U.S. Supreme Court decisions).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4721068.stm (this is newspaper article that was releases on the day after the UN’s report was released that summarizes the findings of the UN)