High Court To Review Terror Trials

Challenge To Military Tribunals As Bush Vows 'We Do Not Torture'

(CBS/AP) 
Guantanamo Bay has become a flash point for criticism of America overseas and by civil libertarians. Initially, the Bush administration refused to let the men see attorneys or challenge their imprisonment. The high court in 2004 said U.S. courts were open to filings from the men, who had been designated enemy combatants.

Retired military leaders, foreign legislators, historians and other groups had pressed the Supreme Court to review the case of Hamdan, who like many Guantanamo inmates began a hunger strike over the summer.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, including Roberts, ruled against Hamdan, finding that the 1949 Geneva Convention governing prisoners of war does not apply to al Qaeda and its members.

The ruling was handed down shortly before Roberts was named to the Supreme Court. Ethics experts have disagreed over whether Roberts should have recused himself from that case, because he was being interviewed for the O'Connor seat while the matter was pending.

The administration argued that it was unnecessary for the court to get involved because the Pentagon had relaxed the rules for tribunals, enabling classified information to be shared with defendants "to the extent consistent with national security, law enforcement interests and applicable law." The government also changed the structure of the panels that will hear the cases and decide the men's punishment, with death sentences possible.

Hamdan's lawyer, Georgetown University professor Neal Katyal, said in a filing that "it is a contrived system subject to change at the whim of the president."

"With constantly shifting terms and conditions, the commissions resemble an automobile dealership instead of a legal tribunal dispensing American justice and protecting human dignity," he wrote.

Hamdan, who was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, denies conspiring to engage in acts of terrorism and denies he was a member of al Qaeda. He has been charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes, murder and terrorism.

Trial proceedings for Hamdan and three other men were begun last summer but the process was halted after a district court ruled that Hamdan could not be tried by a military commission unless a "competent tribunal" determined first that he was not a prisoner of war.

Besides Hamdan, the others who have been charged are an al Qaeda accountant, a propagandist and a Taliban fighter.

The case is Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 05-184.