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Washington: The Bush administration said on Monday that Guantanamo prisoners have no constitutional right to challenge their detention before US federal judges, and the lawsuits by hundreds of detainees must be dismissed.
In papers filed with a US appeals court in Washington, Justice Department attorneys gave their most detailed argument yet that the cases must be dismissed because of the tough anti-terrorism law signed by President George W. Bush last month.
Lawyers for the prisoners have argued the new law does not give the US government the power to arrest suspects overseas and imprison them indefinitely without any charges and without allowing them to challenge their detention in US court.
They say a provision of the law unconstitutionally suspends the right under habeas corpus, a long-standing principle of American law, for detainees to contest their imprisonment.
Justice Department attorneys disagreed. "There is no constitutional habeas right for an enemy alien held outside the United States to challenge his detention," they said. "No actual habeas rights have been suspended."
After Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law, the Justice Department told federal district court judges they no longer have jurisdiction over some 200 cases covering more than 400 prisoners at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Department lawyers told the appeals court the new law and a similar law, the Detainee Treatment Act that Congress approved late last year, provide "an unprecedented level of judicial review for the claims of the enemy aliens held at Guantanamo."
They said the prisoners received a military proceeding, called a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, to determine if the detainee has been rightfully deemed to be an unlawful enemy combatant.
Those proceedings can be appealed directly to the appeals court, but the prisoners are not entitled to a sweeping factual inquiry by a federal district court judge, the lawyers said. Those cases must be dismissed.
The appeals court is expected to rule later this year or early next year, but any decision likely will be appealed to the US Supreme Court, which would have the final word on the law's constitutionality.
The law was prompted by a Supreme Court ruling in June that said Bush lacked the legislative authority in setting up his first system of military commissions after the September 11 attacks.
That prompted Bush to go to Congress to get authority under the new law authorising tough interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects under a new system of military commissions.
Other cases
Meanwhile in Paris, a French court will try in his absence one of the suspected September 11 attack planners for his part in a 2002 bomb attack in Tunisia that killed 21 people, including two French nationals, a justice source said on Monday.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, a Pakistani believed to be one of the planners of the September 11, 2001 attacks, is suspected of organising the suicide truck bomb attack on a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia, on April 11, 2002.
He is being held by US authorities in Guantanamo Bay and is expected to face a US trial
A Paris judge issued a warrant for his arrest and he will be tried in his absence for "conspiracy to murder in association with a terrorist undertaking", the source, who declined to be named, said. The trial is expected within between six months and a year.
In Rabat, three former Guantanamo Bay detainees will appeal a Moroccan court verdict sentencing them to prison, a prominent lawyer said on Monday.
"We are surprised by the verdict. We see the three men as innocent since the United States freed them without charges," said Khaled Al Charkaoui, head of the independent Human Rights Moroccan Centre.
"They are particularly innocent since they committed no crime on Moroccan soil," he added.
On Friday, the criminal court in Sale sentenced Mohammad Slimani to five years in jail and Mohammad Ouali and Najb Houssani to three years in prison each, court officials said.
The court convicted Slimani of setting up a "criminal gang", being active in unauthorised group and taking part in unauthorised gatherings. He is in custody.
Ouali and Houssani, who are free pending appeals, were convicted of forging official documents, court officials said.
The United States turned over the three men to Morocco, a staunch ally in Washington's declared war on terror, 10 months ago after freeing them from detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"I have no answer or explanation for the stark contrast between the decision to jail in Morocco the same people whom the US freed from jail," said leading lawyer and member of parliament Mustapha Ramid.
Ramid said the three men would lodge appeals against the verdict this week but it would take up to three months for a final court decision to confirm or revise the verdict.
A government official, who did not want to be named, defended the trial and verdict as fair.
"The trial followed the due process," he said. The release of the three detainees brought to at least eight the number of Guantanamo prisoners sent to the North African country since 2004, Moroccan human rights activists say.
More than 20 Moroccan are still held at Guantanamo, the activists say.
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