NCC welcomes court decision on Guantanamo detainees
NCC welcomes court decision on Guantanamo detainees
June 28, 2004
The U.S. Supreme Court
United
Methodists in Iowa are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower
court�s decision that a church can be sued for using the term �the
spirit of Satan.� The Supreme Court, at One First St. N.E. in
Washington, begins and ends its one-year term on the first Monday in
October. About 8,000 petitions are filed in a term, along with more than
1,200 additional applications that can be acted upon by a single
justice. A UMNS photo by Franz Jantzen, Collection of the Supreme Court
of the United States. Editors note: mandatory credit, Franz Jantzen,
Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States. Photo number
03-294, Accompanies UMNS #432, 9/11/03
By Carol Fouke*
NEW
YORK (UMNS) -- The National Council of Churches USA welcomed the U.S.
Supreme Court’s June 28 ruling that the nearly 600 foreign nationals
detained at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay have the right to
challenge their detention in American courts.
The
NCC said the Court’s ruling in the consolidated Al Odah v. United
States and Rasul v. Bush supports the Council’s moral contention that
there is no land without law.
“At
issue here,” said the Rev. Robert W. Edgar, NCC chief executive and a
United Methodist clergyman, “is not the guilt or innocence of these
terrorism suspects but rather their right under the U.S. Constitution
and international law to challenge the legality of their detention.
“If the United States is to model democracy, it must accord due process to all whom it detains,” he said.“It
was disingenuous for the U.S. Administration to claim that because
Guantanamo is not formally U.S. ‘sovereign’ territory, the Guanatanamo
detainees could not petition U.S. courts for review of their detention.In
fact, the U.S. courts are the only courts to which these detainees can
assert their innocence and the Supreme Court’s ruling today recognizes
that.”
Photo by Rick Reinhard, Washington, D.C., for the NCC
The Rev. Robert Edgar and former hostage Terry Waite support the mother of a German detained at Guantanamo Bay.
NCC
General Secretary Robert W. Edgar (right) and former Anglican Church
envoy and Beirut hostage Terry Waite (left) and Rabiye Kurnaz, mother of
German detainee Murat Kurnaz, were part of a March 8 news conference in
front of the U.S. Supreme Court, calling for due process rights for
Guantanamo detainees. Photo#04-243. UMNS#273. 6/28/04
Edgar
called on the United States to move quickly to charge or release the
Guantanamo prisoners, and to give those charged a fair chance to defend
themselves.
The
NCC was among signatories to a “friend of the court” brief supporting
the due process rights of the Guantanamo detainees, filed in January by
the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, which was recently renamed Human
Rights First.
In
March, the NCC co-sponsored a visit to Washington, D.C., by a
delegation of the international Guantanamo Human Rights Commission, a
London-based organization that includes relatives of Guantanamo
detainees and others calling for recognition of the detainees’ right to
due process.
The
U.S. Supreme Court -- in its 6-3 decision on the case Al Odah v. United
States and Rasul v. Bush -- ruled that American courts do have the
jurisdiction to consider the claims of prisoners who say they are being
held illegally in violation of their rights.Foreign nationals from more than 40 countries have been held at Guantanamo since early 2002, most of them without charge.
*Carol Fouke is communications director of the National Council of Churches.
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