Legal Showdown Nears for Detainees (until Tuesday to explain)

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gitmo31jul31.story

Legal Showdown Nears for Detainees
Judge gives the U.S. until Tuesday to explain why a man is being held at Guantanamo, or he'll order him freed. Pentagon plans hearings for 4 others.
By Richard A. Serrano
Times Staff Writer

July 31, 2004

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday ordered the government to explain why a Libyan national detained at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should not be released immediately — setting up a showdown next week between the court and the Bush administration over the fate of alleged enemy combatants locked up on the island.<snip>

The developments came just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay, as well as Americans be- ing held as enemy combat- ants without charges filed against them, had the right to challenge the legality of their confinement.

In Washington, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, a Bush appointee who took the bench shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, ordered the govern-ment to explain by Tuesday why Salim Gherebi should not be released.

If the government cannot show that Gherebi is a security risk, Walton said, he will order the 46-year-old Libyan immediately released. That would mark the first time the administra- tion was forced to free any of the captives taken in the war on terrorism.

Stephen Yagman of Los Angeles is Gherebi's lawyer but said he has never met his client or spoken to him because of restraints imposed by the military. He was hired by Gherebi's brother, Belaid of San Diego, to help win his release. Because of Walton's involvement in the case, Yagman said, the military most like- ly now will let him visit his client in Cuba.<snip>

[gratuitous]

1. Wow, a judge who's actually read the constitution

Maybe he can explain it to Congress, and point out why so much of the USA PATRIOT Act is unconstitutional.

[BeFree]

2. It has taken long enough

But Justice finally has a chance to prevail.

Now ya see why they hate lawyers? They love to subvert Justice and lawyers stop 'em.