No hearing for Guantanamo inmates

April 30, 2007


There are about 385 detainees still at the Guantanamo Bay prison [AP]

The US Supreme Court has sided with the Bush administration and declined to hear an appeal by two Guantanamo detainees facing a military tribunal hearing.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Omar Khadr, who are facing terror charges, are seeking a review of their confinement in the federal court.

Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer said they would hear the appeal but it takes four votes for the nine-member Supreme Court to do so.

The court had ruled that the military tribunals should run first before the two men can bring an appeal.

The court's action follows its April 2 decision not to step into related aspects of the legal battle regarding other Guantanamo Bay detainees.

In June, Hamdan won a landmark US Supreme Court ruling which led to a repudiation of the Bush administration.

Illegal system

The court had found the initial military tribunal system created to try terrorism suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to be illegal.

The ruling prompted George Bush, the US president, to seek congressional approval last year for tough interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects under a new military tribunal system.

The new law also took away the right of the prisoners to challenge their confinement before US federal judges.

The Supreme Court in early April rejected, for now, appeals by two different groups of Guantanamo prisoners.

Their challenge to the law was similar to the one brought by lawyers for Hamdan and Khadr.

There are about 385 detainees still at Guantanamo.

The first prisoners arrived more than five years ago after the US began what Bush called the "war on terror" in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US.

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