Fallout from Boumediene order begins
on Jul 6, 2007 at 2:34 pm
The Supreme Court’s surprise order on June 29 agreeing to hear the Guantanamo Bay detainees’ appeals, after having turned them down in April, is beginning to have an impact in lower courts. U.S. District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle on Thursday refused for the time being to dismiss pending habeas cases in her Court, citing the Supreme Court’s action.
In six cases, she issued the same order, denying “without prejudice” the Justice Department motion to dismiss, “pending the Supreme Court’s decision” in Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. U.S. (06-1196).
Such orders — more may be coming from other District judges in Washington — mean that existing court orders protecting lawyers’ access to their Guantanamo clients, preserving evidence and preventing transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to other countries will remain intact.
UPDATE 6 p.m.
The Justice Department moved in the D.C. Circuit Court on Friday to keep out of court a sworn statement by a military intelligence officer that was sharply critical of the process the military uses to screen war-on-terrorism captives and declare them “enemy combatants.” The Department urged the Circuit Court not to admit the declaration of a Reserve Army lieutenant colonel, Stephen Abraham. The government’s opposition can be found here
Lawyers for detainees involved in two pending cases, Bismullah v. Gates (Circuit docket 06-1197) and Parhat v. Gates (06-1397), had filed the Abraham statement to demonstrate the flaws they see in the so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunal process. CSRTs are the military panels that decide when a Guatanamo detainee must remain confined at the U.S. military prison camp in Cuba. The Circuit Court is weighing how it will handle detainee challenges to CSRT confinement rulings. (The filing of the Abraham declaration is discussed in the body of this post on June 22. The declaration also was filed at the Supreme Court in detainee cases pending there.)
The Department’s opposition contended that Colonel Abraham’s statement is filled with “innuendo” and does not reflect a full and accurate picture of the CSRT process as it actually exists. Far from being a flawed review mechanism, the Department said, it is “a vital, robust process rather than a process designed to reach only a preordained result.”
The Circuit Court, the Department filing said, will be able to judge each CSRT case by examining the evidence before each such panel, so “a declaration making general and derisive characterizations of the evidence is of no moment in conducting tht review.” If a given CSRT review was based on inadequate information, it said, the Court can send it back to the Pentagon for another review.
The Department urged the Circuit Court to reject the plea of the detainees’ lawyer for the right to question under oath a high-level Pentagon official about the CSRT process.
