WASHINGTON — A federal judge threw out a lawsuit Wednesday by foreign-born terrorism suspects challenging their detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling that last year's landmark Supreme Court ruling did not provide them the legal basis to win their freedom.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that Congress had authorized the president to order the detention of "enemy combatants" for the duration of the war on terrorism.
The lawsuit by seven of the roughly 550 detainees being held at the U.S. Navy base failed to show valid legal grounds to overturn that power, Leon said. As a result, the proper place to contest their detainment is before military review boards, not federal courts.
"The petitioners are asking this court to do something no federal court has done before: evaluate the legality of the [president's] capture and detention of nonresident aliens, outside the United States, during a time of armed conflict," Leon wrote.
"In the final analysis, the court's role in reviewing the military's decision to capture and detain a nonresident alien is, and must be, highly circumscribed," he wrote.
Lawyers representing the detainees said they would appeal. If allowed to stand, the decision would "render meaningless" the Supreme Court ruling by allowing detainees access to federal court, but then automatically dismissing their suits as groundless, they said.
"I didn't think it was going to be quite as sweeping as this nor quite as dismissive of the Supreme Court's decisions," said Barbara Olshansky, attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. "It means that people can be seized everywhere."
Neal Sonnet, who heads the American Bar Assn.'s task force on enemy combatants, called Leon's order disappointing. "It flies in the face of what we think the Supreme Court ruled in June -- that Guantanamo detainees had substantive rights beyond the jurisdictional question," he said.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's argument that U.S. courts had no business second-guessing detentions of foreigners held on foreign soil. It said the Guantanamo detainees could challenge their detention, but it left lower courts to determine the actual merits of their claims.
The decision prompted a flurry of lawsuits on behalf of detainees.
Another judge in the same District Court, Joyce Hens Green, is expected to rule soon on similar claims filed by 55 other detainees.
