Rights grouops say the detainees will not recieve a fair trial under a military tribunal

Michael Mukasey said in Tokyo on Friday that he was disappointed with the decision because it would lead to "hundreds" of cases being referred to the federal district court.
 
"I think it bears emphasis that the court's decision does not concern military commission trials, which will continue to proceed," he said.

"Instead it addresses the procedures that the Congress and the president [George Bush] put in place to permit enemy combatants to challenge their detention."

Court ruling

The supreme court on Thursday ruled, by a vote of five to four, that detainees in the US jail in southern Cuba "have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus".

Mukasey said that he had not yet studied the supreme court ruling and that the government's next move had not been decided.

However he did say that it would comply with the decision.

"We are going to study both the decision itself, and whether any legislation or any other action may be appropriate."

George Bush, the US president, also said that he disagreed with the ruling but would abide by it.

"It's a deeply divided court and I strongly agree with those who dissented ... and their dissent was based on serious concerns about US national security," he said during a visit to Italy on Thursday.

Constitutional rights

Marjorie Cohn MWC News Senior Editor, said today: "The Supreme Court held that the Guantánamo detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus and that the scheme for reviewing designations of 'enemy combatant' under the Combatant Status Review Tribunals is an inadequate substitute for habeas corpus.

"Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority in the 5-4 decision, breaking the tie between the liberal and conservative justices: 'Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers ..."

"Within the Constitution's separation-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear challenges to the authority of the Executive to imprison a person.' Boumedienne is the poster child for how delicately the Court is now balanced, and the disastrous consequences to the doctrine of separation-of-powers that await us if a President .She said"

The court ruled that even if the base was on Cuban territory, it was in fact operating as if it were on American soil and therefore detainees had the same constitutional rights as all Americans.
 
The ruling is the third on Guantanamo that has gone against the Bush administration.
 
Detainees and their legal teams could now demand that the government reveal the evidence against them to justify their continued detention.
 
The government has refused to do this arguing it would be against the interests of national security.
 
Detainees have long protested that they had been mistreated, and rights groups have questioned the legality of the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals.
 
About 270 so-called enemy combatants remain at the prison facility, some who have been held for more than six years.

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