Guantánamo Prisoner Granted Access to Lawyer

In the first ruling of its kind, a federal appeals court today decided that a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba should be granted a court hearing in the United States inquiring into his detention, and should be represented by a lawyer hired by his brother in this country.

The split decision by a three-judge panel in San Francisco raised the possibility that all the approximately 660 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay jail for alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters could also be given their first habeas corpus hearings in a U.S. court.

But legal observers said that this case, filed by the brother of a Libyan detainee at Guantanamo Bay, is almost certain to become moot after it is inevitably folded into a pending U.S. Supreme Court case that will examine not only the issues raised in this California case but other issues, as well.

The decision was written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the nation's most liberal appeals courts. The ruling contains powerful language raising questions about the military's policy of holding the prisoners in Cuba without allowing them lawyers or access to U.S. courts.

"We simply cannot accept the government's position that the executive branch possesses the unchecked authority to imprison indefinitely any persons, foreign citizens included ... without permitting such prisoners recourse of any kind to any judicial forum," said decision.

Until the U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to hear another pending case, previous federal court decisions had established that the Guantanamo Bay captives had no right to habeas corpus hearings. Judges in the previous court cases cited a 1950 U.S. Supreme Court case establishing that foreign nationals held in foreign countries had no habeas corpus rights in American courts.

The pending Supreme Court case was filed by more than a dozen British, Australian and Kuwaiti detainees whose relatives asked that their cases be reviewed by U.S. courts.