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WASHINGTON - Guantanamo prisoners have no constitutional right to challenge their detention before US federal judges, and the lawsuits by hundreds of detainees must be dismissed, says the Bush Administration.
In papers filed with a US appeals court in Washington, Justice Department lawyers 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 said the law unconstitutionally suspended the right under habeas corpus for detainees to contest their imprisonment.
Justice Department lawyers disagreed. "There is no constitutional habeas right for an enemy alien held outside the United States to challenge his detention," they said.
After Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the Justice Department told federal district court judges they no longer had jurisdiction over around 200 cases covering more than 400 prisoners at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, 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 prisoners received a military proceeding to determine if they had been rightly deemed to be an unlawful enemy combatant.
Those proceedings could be appealed directly to the appeals court, but the prisoners were 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 by early next year, but any decision likely will be appealed to the US Supreme Court.
The law was prompted by a Supreme Court ruling in June that Bush lacked authority in setting up his first 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 suspects.
- REUTERS
