Detainees Appeals Fall On Deaf Justices Again — Senator Files Bill To Close Gitmo

WASHINGTON, D.C. The U.S. Supreme Court once again rejected appeals from two prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Omar Khadr remain in legal limbo because not enough justices agreed to take their appeals.

To hear appeals, four of the nine justices are required, but only three stepped forward: Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer.

Hamdan wanted to go around the Court of Appeals circuit that recently ruled against Khadr in a fight against his imprisonment as an “enemy combatant.”

Hamdan is a former driver for Osama bin Laden. Khadr is a Canadian charged in the killing of an Army medic in Afghanistan. These men are the only two of the 385 prisoners there charged with crimes related to terrorism.

The court’s decision was the second since early April when it decided to refuse a case brought by uncharged detainees that wanted their cases heard in federal courts.

The court last year declared unconstitutional the Bush administration’s military tribunal system because the system was bound by no federal law and was in violation of international law. Hamdan was a party in the case.

To legalize the tribunals, Congress then controlled by Republicans adopted the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

A week after the Justice Department called for stricter limits on lawyers access to their clients at the Gitmo prison, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, filed a bill to close the facilities.

The Feinstein bill would allow for the transfer of the 385 prisoners there to more hospitable detention facilities for trial in the U.S. or for repatriation to their own homelands.