Reply #1: Measures Seek to Restrict Detainees’ Access to Courts (NYT) [View All]

[spindrifter]

By NEIL A. LEWIS and KATE ZERNIKE
Published: September 21, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 — Although the effort has been partly obscured by the highly publicized wrangling over military commissions for war crimes trials, the Bush administration and its allies in Congress are trying to use the same legislation to strip federal courts of their authority to review the detentions of almost all terrorism suspects.

Both the legislation introduced on behalf of the administration and the competing bill sponsored by a group of largely Republican opponents in the Senate include a provision that would bar foreigners held abroad from using the federal trial courts for challenges to detention known as habeas corpus lawsuits. If the provision was enacted, it would mean that all of the lawsuits brought in federal court by about 430 detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would be wiped from the books.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee rejected an effort by opponents to strike that provision from the House bill by a party-line vote, with all 15 Republicans present voting to leave it in and all 12 Democrats voting against it. Then, after some initial difficulty in getting approval for the bill, the committee passed it on to the full House.

Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has taken a leading role in trying to counter the administration’s efforts, said that stripping the federal courts of the right to hear habeas corpus challenges “raised grave constitutional questions.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/washington/21habeas.html?hp&ex=1158811200&en=42d736eddb2f98cb&ei=5094&partner=homepage