Military Commissions Act Headed for Supreme Court

[kpete]

Military Commissions Act Headed for Supreme Court
Friday, 23 February 2007
by William Fisher

Following an appeals court’s divided decision upholding the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act, opponents of the measure are racing the clock to file an appeal to the US Supreme Court and have it heard during the court’s current term.

A spokesperson for the Center for Constitutional Rights, the New York-based legal advocacy group that brought the original suit, told IPS it expected the appeal to be filed within the next two weeks and heard in the spring.

Earlier this week, a federal appeals court ruled 2-1 that detainees in US custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have no right to challenge their imprisonment in federal courts. The decision upheld the core of the Military Commissions Act (MCA), which was passed in a close vote last year by a Republican-controlled congress. The law stripped federal civilian courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions, giving President George W. Bush the right to indefinitely hold detainees outside the US without charges. The ruling affects some 400 prisoners still held at Guantanamo Bay, but could also establish a precedent affecting prisoners held by the US in Afghanistan and in CIA “secret prisons” in other countries.

The Court’s majority decision found that overruling the MCA would “defy the will of congress,” and asserted that habeas corpus does not apply to foreigners who are not in the US. It effectively ruled that the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay is a property leased by the US from Cuba, and that Cuba has sovereignty over it.

more at:
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/1038/81/

[EST]

1. That Cuba having sovereignty bit is always amazing.

The manipulators keep putting it out and a bemused judiciary keeps buying it.
There is a huge difference between claimed sovereignty and actual sovereignty-let Cuba attempt to kick the US out and the difference will become immediately obvious.