The United States Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a case brought by two detainees at the US prison in Guantánamo Bay, who were contesting the legality of the base’s military courts.
The court did not give any reason for refusing to hear the case, but said three of the nine judges had been in favour of proceeding with the hearing.
Yemeni national Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Canadian Omar Khadr, who are about to face military trial at Guantánamo, had urged the Supreme Court earlier in April to rule on their legal rights before proceedings begin.
The two men said they did not have time to pursue other legal avenues to see if they were protected under the US Constitution because their day in military court is fast approaching.
Both men are among the first Guantánamo prisoners the US government intends to prosecute this summer in special military courts, known as military commissions.
”The time to hear this particular case is now,” the petitioners had said in their brief. ”Petitioners are irreparably harmed by having to defend themselves in trials where they are kept ignorant as to whether or not the Constitution protects them and governs the procedures by which their prosecutions are allowed to proceed.”
Earlier in April, the US high court ruled that dozens of Guantánamo Bay inmates had no right to challenge their detention in federal court and that they had not exhausted all other legal options.
Omar Khadr, arrested in Afghanistan at 15, was charged on April 24 with murder and supporting terrorists. He is only the second detainee brought before the controversial special tribunals.
Khadr was born in Canada to an engineer of Egyptian origin, Ahmed Said Khadr, who US authorities say was a financier of al-Qaeda. He was killed in October 2003 in an attack by Pakistani forces on the terrorist network.
Salim Ahmed Hamdan, former driver for al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, was arrested in Afghanistan in November 2001 and was charged with conspiracy in July 2003 before a military tribunal.
However, he challenged the legality of the tribunals set up after the September 11 2001 attacks on the US and the detention of combatants, mostly on the battlefields of Afghanistan, who were taken to Guantánamo, Cuba.
The Supreme Court took up his case and agreed with his argument, saying that President George Bush had overstepped his authority by instituting the tribunals.
In October, Bush signed a law allowing the tribunals to try ”enemy combatants” with suspected ties to al-Qaeda or the Taliban regime that formerly ruled Afghanistan.
Opened in January 2002, the Guantánamo detention centre has about 380 prisoners, of whom 80 are to be transferred or released. Between 60 and 80 of them are to be taken before a tribunal. About 200 others are not scheduled to be charged or released.
The first to be judged, Australian David Hicks, was sentenced on March 9 to nine months in prison after pleading guilty to giving assistance to a terrorist group. He is to complete his sentence in Australia. — Sapa-AFP