WASHINGTON (AP) - Two federal appeals court judges subjected a Bush administration attorney to intense questioning Tuesday as lawyers for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay pleaded for a broad court inquiry on behalf of the detainees.Judges Judith Rogers and Douglas Ginsburg expressed skepticism about government assurances that the appeals court will receive all necessary evidence in evaluating the detainees' status as enemy combatants. ``I don't see how there can be any meaningful review if we don't know what we don't know,'' Ginsburg told a government attorney.
The latest chapter in the cases of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay is about military tribunals that designated them enemy combatants, leaving them without any of the rights accorded prisoners of war.
| This is about the appeals process once a tribunal finds a Gitmo mook guilty of something, and not about the part of the new law that allows for tribunals in the first place. But you can see where the 'defense' lawyers are headed. |
Letter said the tribunals largely duplicate long-standing procedures laid out in the Army Field Manual. ``You'd better not invoke that,'' Rogers admonished the Justice Department lawyer. ``We don't have all those'' procedures here.
Rogers is a Clinton appointee; Ginsburg, the chief judge of the appeals court, is a Reagan appointee; and the third member of the panel, Karen Lecraft Henderson, is an appointee of President Bush's father.
A year ago, the Republican-controlled Congress at the urging of the Bush administration stripped the prisoners of the right to challenge their indefinite detention. The only challenge detainees can make is to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, for the limited purpose of assessing the military tribunal procedures. ``This is our only chance to go back to the government well,'' attorney Jeffrey Lang told the judges.
The two cases before the appeals court involve Haji Bismullah, an Afghan, and seven men who are Uighurs, Muslims from China who are a persecuted
The detainees' attorneys want the appeals court to allow a broad inquiry questioning the accuracy and completeness of the evidence the tribunals gathered about the detainees, most of it classified. The Justice Department seeks a limited review, saying that the findings of the military tribunals are ``entitled to the highest level of deference.'' The appeals court should not engage in fact-finding, argues the Justice Department.
| Appeals courts generally aren't supposed to engage in fact-finding; that's the job of a trial court or tribunal. Appeals courts ensure that the law was followed. |
| ... the same quasi-commie organization that received the names of all the detainees illegally, as we documented yesterday ... |