Its rulings have defined some of the most momentous events in US history, from school desegregation to abortion rights. Now the Supreme Court is to examine conditions at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison camp and question some of the fundamental principles of George Bush’s “war on terror”.
In the next fortnight observers believe the court will deal a massive blow to an administration already reeling from the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison, and which has endured international outcry over the sprawling Guantanamo Bay prison, whose 700 inmates are held without charge or access to lawyers. “These sorts of decisions come around for the court maybe once every 20 years. This is very big stuff,” said Professor Bill Banks, a Supreme Court expert at Syracuse University.
Of the three crucial cases, two involve the treatment of so-called “enemy combatants” and one challenges the status of Guantanamo Bay itself. It will deliver its verdicts by the end of June at the latest, and possibly as early as this week.
The Guantanamo Bay case involves several plaintiffs, including Britons who were released earlier this year. Inmates held at the prison camp, which has been condemned by human rights groups and governments around the world, have no access to lawyers and face trials in military tribunals. The tribunals take place in secret and there is no right of appeal. So far only three inmates have been charged, even though many have been there for more than two years.
Yet the Bush administration has resisted all attempts to challenge conditions at Guantanamo because it says the base is theoretically on Cuban territory. The Supreme Court is likely to reject that argument. “It is almost inevitable that (the court) will find against the administration,” said Professor Lee Albert of the University of Buffalo. That could prompt many more suits in the US as lawyers acting on behalf of Guantanamo detainees register complaints about their treatment there.
In the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the issue could be hugely damaging. It is widely believed that many of the techniques used in the Iraqi jail were devised by staff originally based at Guantanamo Bay. British prisoners released from the prison alleged systematic torture. Steven Watt, a lawyer for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, said it expected many requests to represent detainees if the court rules that the jail comes under US jurisdiction.
The other two cases focus on one of the central tenets of the war on terror: the ability to declare suspects “enemy combatants” and hold them indefinitely without trial or lawyers. “In effect, President Bush declared (that) the whole world was a battlefield in this war, and so anyone detained as a terrorist anywhere could be declared an enemy combatant and just locked away,” said Watt.
The two cases both involve US citizens, Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi. Hamdi was caught fighting for the Taleban in Afghanistan, and Padilla was arrested in America and accused of plotting terrorist attacks in the US. Both men are locked up indefinitely in US military custody. Experts believe that the Supreme Court will grant some legal rights and process to the men, including access to lawyers and a demand that the two men have some form of legal hearing. The status of enemy combatant will effectively be abolished. That will come as a victory for critics of the government, who have voiced fears over erosion of civil liberties. “They have bent laws and gone too far,” said Banks.
If the court rules against the government it will come as another blow to a Bush re-election campaign that has endured a disastrous few months. Bush’s numbers have slumped in the polls; a Los Angeles Times poll last week put Democratic challenger John Kerry ahead of the President by 51 percent to 44 percent. Bush’s approval ratings have fallen to all-time lows.
However, the Supreme Court’s decisions cannot be taken for granted. “We simply do not know for sure, no matter what we think in private,” said Albert. If the court announces shock rulings that support the government, it would represent a huge erosion of US civil liberties, say critics. “If that happens, then God help us all,” said Banks.
