Petition Assails U.S. on Prisoners

The Bush administration is facing increased challenges on legal and diplomatic fronts to its policy of holding about 300 war detainees in Guantanamo Bay, as critics insist the United States has violated basic rights accorded prisoners.

The latest salvo in the debate came Tuesday when lawyers for three Muslims captured in Afghanistan--two British men and an Australian--asked a federal court here to declare illegal a White House order allowing the military to hold the detainees “virtually incommunicado” in Cuba.

“The question here is, can the president of the United States detain people indefinitely without charge and without trial?” asked Stephen Kenny, a lawyer for 26-year-old David Hicks, an Australian who went to Pakistan to study Islam and joined the Taliban.

“If he’s not a prisoner of war, on what basis is he being held? What has he done wrong, and what charges does he face?” Kenny asked in an interview.

The debate hinges on whether the extraordinary events of Sept. 11 justify the government’s use of extraordinary means against people captured in Afghanistan, including suspected Taliban supporters who may not have direct ties to terrorist activities.

Although the Bush administration has defended its Guantanamo Bay prison operation as humane, the policy has provoked civil liberties concerns from some European leaders, along with dissension within the administration over whether detainees should be considered prisoners of war.

After Secretary of State Colin L. Powell voiced concerns about some aspects of U.S. detention policy, President Bush last month modified the U.S. position in declaring that the military would apply the rules of the Geneva Conventions to Taliban soldiers in custody, but not to suspected members of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network.

But civil rights advocates maintain that the new stance does not go far enough.

The petition filed Tuesday in federal court by the Center for Constitutional Rights maintains that an order signed by Bush on Nov. 13--giving the military the authority to detain terrorist suspects and establish tribunals for trying them--flies in the face of established U.S. and international law.

The petition marks the second to challenge the Guantanamo Bay prison operation, following a claim brought in Los Angeles last month by clergy, lawyers and academicians. A hearing in the Los Angeles case is set for Thursday after the district court Tuesday rejected claims that Judge A. Howard Matz, who is hearing the case, had a conflict of interest.

But Matz has already expressed “grave doubts” about his authority to intervene from Los Angeles, and legal analysts said Tuesday that the new Washington claim appears to stand a stronger chance of success because it provides a more logical forum for hearing the case, and also specifies individual prisoners whose rights were allegedly violated.

The Center for Constitutional Rights and other lawyers involved in the case alleged that Bush’s order allows the military to hold detainees at Camp X-Ray at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station without charging them, without notifying them of their legal rights and without giving them access to lawyers. For those prisoners who are not brought before a military tribunal, detention is “indefinite and unreviewable,” the petition alleges. And Bush allegedly has overly broad discretion to decide who is locked up and for how long.

Officials at the Pentagon and the Justice Department refused to comment Tuesday on the allegations. Capt. Riccho Player, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said that while he could not discuss the legal issues raised in the petition, the 300 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were being treated “absolutely” fairly in accordance with U.S. and international law.

The detainees “are able to pray, they’re getting ethnically appropriate meals three times a day, they’re gaining weight,” Player said. “You have to remember these are dangerous individuals we’re dealing with, and they’re being treated humanely even though they’d probably meet you and slit your throat as quickly as they’d shake your hand.”

Hicks, the Australian named in Tuesday’s filing, allegedly threatened his American captors and had to be subdued by military guards en route to Cuba. But his father, Terry Hicks of Adelaide, Australia, said in an interview that his son deserves better treatment from his American captors.

The Australian government has tried to get Hicks’ family in to the naval base to see him but was turned down. According to the petition, the Australian government told the Hicks family in a Feb. 9 letter that “the United States has advised that, at this stage, no family access be allowed any of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay,” according to the petition.

Intervention by a court “is the only way we can get any movement,” Hicks’ father said. ‘He’s being held under a law that, to me, doesn’t sound right.”

Terry Hicks said that although he does not support his son’s decision to join the Taliban after converting to Islam, “I do support my son, and I want him to have a fair go of it.”

The petition maintains that detained British Muslims Asif Iqbal and Shafiqu Rasul, like Hicks, are “not enemy aliens” of the United States. The two young men, neighbors in the English town of Tipton, were reportedly swayed by the hard-line teachings of a radical Islamic cleric in Great Britain and then traveled to Afghanistan to fight alongside Taliban and Al Qaeda troops. According to British media reports, they were allegedly taught that Islamic teachings allowed them to kill non-Muslims.

But the petition maintains that neither man had any direct or indirect involvement in terrorist activities or the events of Sept. 11 and that their detention is “unlawful.”

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Times staff writer David Rosenzweig in Los Angeles contributed to this report.