Iraq Is New Front in Detainee Battle

U.S. Supreme Court

Posted Feb 27, 2008, 03:27 pm CST

Mohammad Munaf appears above to the right of
three Romanian captives.

By David G. Savage

The long legal battle over the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has succeeded in raising—but not yet answering—a basic question about American law: What is the reach of habeas corpus? Is the right to take your case before a judge limited to American citizens in the United States? Or does it extend to prisoners around the world when they are arrested and imprisoned by U.S. authorities?

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this spring for the third time on whether habeas corpus extends to foreign prisoners held at Guantanamo. The justices have twice decided, by narrow margins, that these detainees have habeas rights.

But those decisions have had little impact, in part because Congress has voted twice, also by narrow margins, to revoke the right to habeas corpus for “aliens” who are held as “enemy combatants.” The pending question in Boumediene v. Bush, No. 06-1195, argued in December, is whether the Constitution protects this right for the men imprisoned at Guantanamo, regardless of what Congress says.

Read the ABA Journal's preview of the habeas cases before the high court in March in "Iraq Is New Front in Detainee Battle."

The cases combined by the court for oral argument are Munaf v. Geren, No. 06-1666, and Geren v. Omar, No. 07-394.

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