Basis for offshore prison is undercut

The Bush administration may not be legally required to shut down its detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But now there appears to be little legal reason to keep it open.

Thursday's Supreme Court ruling on detainee rights eliminated the main reason for putting foreign prisoners in an offshore facility to begin with: to keep them out of American courts, where they could more effectively challenge their imprisonment.

The ruling reignited debate in Washington over whether it's now time to close Guantanamo, a symbol of international controversy ever since it opened.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is among administration officials making that argument, and the Pentagon has scouted options for transferring the detainees to American military prisons.

But the debate may be moot, because President Bush's opinion has not changed.

"Given the history, I think there's likely to be intense debate within the administration over this question," said Matthew Waxman, a former Pentagon detainee affairs official who is now a law professor at Columbia University. "Will it happen in this administration? I hope so, but I'm pessimistic."

Nevertheless, attorneys for many of the 270 detainees are planning to inundate the courts with petitions. The result will be dozens of hearings that will force the administration to make public much of its evidence in a process it will find difficult to control.

The civilian proceedings will differ dramatically from the original detention hearings at Guantanamo, said Charles D. Stimson, who also has overseen detainee affairs at the Pentagon.

In civilian courts, detainees will have lawyers who can present evidence and question witnesses. In some cases, evidence used against detainees at Guantanamo will be excluded in U.S. courts, such as information obtained through coercion or classified material.

"The administration is going to have to roll up its sleeves and pull together the evidence against the detainees," said Stimson, now at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank.

Gates, who was attending a NATO meeting in Brussels and had not yet read the ruling, declined to say it vindicated his position on closing Guantanamo. But he said the department would assess what it must do to comply.

"The ruling of the court is the law of the land, and we are going to have to look at what the implications are for us," Gates said.