U.S. Asks Judge to Reject Claim Over Detainees

Federal courts have no authority over suspected Al Qaeda terrorists being held at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba, government lawyers contended in a legal brief filed Thursday in Los Angeles.

The government attorneys asked U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz to dismiss a habeas corpus petition by a coalition of clergy, academics and civil rights lawyers demanding that the detainees in Guantanamo be brought before a civilian court in the United States.

Nearly 160 suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan are being housed in open-air cages on the base while the Bush administration decides whether they should be tried before a military tribunal.

An ad hoc coalition organized by Los Angeles civil rights lawyer Stephen Yagman contended in a suit filed Jan. 20 that the detainees are being held in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of war prisoners.

In its response Thursday, the government cited a 1950 U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving German nationals who were captured in China at the end of World War II and taken to an American-run prison in occupied Germany.

The court held that the prisoners could not file habeas corpus petitions in any U.S. courts because they were seized and at all times held outside the United States’ sovereign territory.

The Guantanamo base is not sovereign U.S. territory, the government said in its brief. Cuba retained sovereignty when it leased the base to the United States beginning in 1903.

The high court in 1950 also found that allowing “enemy aliens” to file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. courts could be seen as interfering with the president’s powers as commander in chief.

While arguing that U.S. courts are barred from intervening, the government on Thursday asked Matz to throw out the petition on narrower grounds--namely, that Yagman’s coalition lacks standing to bring the case because it has “no significant relationship” with any of the detainees.

The government’s brief said that courts are “properly loath” to unnecessarily address issues related to the president’s powers as commander in chief.

Moreover, it said, deciding the case on narrow grounds will affect only the coalition’s rights and not those of the Guantanamo prisoners.

Describing the coalition as “uninvited meddlers,” the government said the petitioners have no idea whether the detainees have any desire to have their cases adjudicated in the United States, “a nation against which they have waged war.”

Any further consideration of the issues should await a case in which individual detainees have an opportunity to choose their own legal counsel, the brief argued.

The brief was prepared by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles in collaboration with the Justice Department and the solicitor general in Washington.

Yagman’s coalition has a week to file a written answer to the government’s brief. Matz has set a Feb. 14 date to hear oral arguments.