Passage of The Military Commissions Act and The Detainee Treatment Act
In the Summer of 2006, the habeas corpus submissions known as Hamdan v. Rumsfeld reached the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled the Executive Branch lacked the Constitutional authority to initiate military commissions to try Guantanamo captives. However, it also ruled that the United States Congress did have the authority to set up military commissions. And, in the fall of 2006 the Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, setting up military commissions similar to those initially set up by the Executive Branch.
The Act also stripped captives of the right to file habeas corpus submissions in the US Court system. The earlier Detainee Treatment Act, passed on December 31, 2005, had stripped captives of the right to initiate new habeas corpus submissions, while leaving existing habeas corpus motions in progress.
The Detainee Treatment Act had explicitly authorized an appeal process for Combatant Status Review Tribunals which failed to follow the military's own rules. And Sabin Willet, the Uyghur's lawyer, has chosen to initiate appeals of the Uyghur's Combatant Status Review Tribunals.
"Each Uighurs' CSRT was inconsistent with the standards and procedures specified by the Secretary of Defense, because none appropriately applied the definition of 'Enemy Combatant'. The CSRT Procedures defined an 'enemy combatant' as: 'an individual who was part of or supporting the Taliban or al-Qaida forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.'"
However, Willet argues, the Combatant Status Review Tribunals failed to consider the interrogators conclusions that the Uyghurs were not enemies, had not supported the Taliban, and had not engaged in hostilities.
Assistant Attorney General Peter D. Keisler led the response team. Keisler's team accused Willet of trying to:
"...recreate the habeas regime that Congress recently abolished."
They said the argument boiled down to:
" detainees captured on a battlefield during a time of war, be given unprecedented access to our nations courts and to classified information, even after Congress emphatically rejected such an approach?"
Read more about this topic: Akhdar Qasem Basit
Famous quotes containing the words passage of, passage, military, act and/or treatment:
“Modern dancers are inconvenienced by a local ordinance requiring the passage of visible light between partners.”
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Maria. He’s drunk nightly in your company.
Sir Toby Belch. With drinking healths to my niece. I’ll drink to her as long as there is a passage in my throat, and drink in Illyria.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Stately as a galleon, I sail across the floor,
Doing the military two-step, as in the days of yore.”
—Joyce Grenfell (1910–1979)
“Just as a waterfall grows slower and more lightly suspended as it plunges down, so the great man of action tends to act with greater calmness than his tempestuous desires prior to the deed would lead one to expect.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“If the study of all these sciences, which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)