Pentagon Sets Review of Detainees

The Pentagon plans rapid legal reviews to determine whether the 595 prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are properly being held as “enemy combatants,” Bush administration officials said Wednesday.

The reviews are in response to a Supreme Court ruling last month that the detainees are entitled to legal due process.

The detainees will be notified that they can contest their status as enemy combatants, that they have a right to a “personal representative” who is a military officer but not a lawyer, and that they have a right to access U.S. federal courts.

The Pentagon is allowing the reviews -- known as Combatant Status Review Tribunals -- so that when detainees challenge their incarceration in federal courts, as the Supreme Court ruled they could do, “the government will be in a position to say that we fully satisfied our legal obligations,” said a senior Justice Department official, who briefed reporters at the Pentagon on condition of anonymity.

After each detainee’s representative interviews the detainee and decides whether the prisoner wants to contest his designation as an enemy combatant, the tribunal will have 30 days to begin hearings.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the reviews fell short of the due process called for by the high court, citing in particular the lack of legal counsel.

“The Supreme Court upheld the rule of law over unchecked executive authority,” said Rachel Meeropol, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based human rights group.

“The review procedures for the detainees set up by the Department of Defense are inadequate and illegal, and they fail to satisfy the court’s ruling,” she said.

The organization’s legal director, Jeff Fogel, wrote to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last week asking for access to the center’s clients.

Each prisoner would get one review of his status as an enemy combatant.

If he continues to be held, he would get annual reviews to determine whether he remains a threat to the United States. Both processes will be overseen by Navy Secretary Gordon R. England.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz signed the order Wednesday requiring the reviews, and the Pentagon has 10 days to notify the detainees of their rights under the order.

The status tribunal is to be composed of three neutral military officers who have not been involved in capturing, detaining, interrogating or determining the status of a detainee.

Under the Bush administration’s reasoning, enemy combatants are held in a kind of twilight status between civilians and uniformed soldiers, effectively denying them the protections of a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention.

Details about the panel were unclear, including whether the proceedings would be secret and whether the names of the 595 Guantanamo detainees would be released for the first time.

The Supreme Court ruled last month in Rasul vs. Bush that the detainees were entitled to challenge their indefinite detention in federal court.

In Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, a separate case decided the same day, the high court ruled that the Pentagon was presumed to correctly hold detainees but must grant them a chance to rebut that assertion.

If any detainee is determined not to be an enemy combatant, Rumsfeld would transfer him to the State Department, which would in many cases deport the prisoner to his home country, said a senior defense official, also briefing reporters on condition of anonymity.