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The Pentagon announced Wednesday night that it plans to hold hearings for all 595 detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison in response to a Supreme Court ruling last week that the government was jailing terrorism suspects without due process, local media reports said Thursday.
The hearings are designed to determine whether the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, meet the definition of "enemy combatants," as President George W. Bush and the US military have described them for more than two years. The administration has used the enemy combatant designation to argue that the detainees do not warrant the same protections afforded to detainees held in line with the Geneva Conventions.
Since the prison for alleged terrorists opened in early 2002, human rights activists have argued that the US government is obligated under international law to hold hearings for the detainees. The government turned down the appeal on the grounds that the detainees did not deserve such rights because they are terrorists who wore no soldier's uniform and violated the laws of war by killing civilians.
The hearings, to be called Combatant Status Review Tribunals, are separate from the hearings in the federal court that the Supreme Court ruled the government must offer to all inmates to contest their detentions.
The tribunals were mandated by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in an order signed Wednesday stipulating that by July 17every detainee will be notified that his status as an enemy combatant will be reviewed and that he has the right to a habeas corpus hearing in federal court.
Each detainee will receive the help of a non-lawyer military officer acting as a "personal representative" who will assist him in preparing for the combatant status hearing. Three neutral commissioned military officers -- none involved in the detainee's capture, detention or interrogation -- will hear each case.
If a prisoner is found not to be an enemy combatant, then he will be handed over to the State Department for transfer to his home country, officials said.
The essential function of the hearings, officials said, is to help government lawyers argue their cases for continued detention in the habeas corpus hearings that eventually will be held for all detainees.
In addition, six Guantanamo Bay detainees will be tried for crimes at a military court and nine others are eligible for these trials, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
(Xinhua News Agency July 9, 2004)
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