Print this article

Send to friend

By Stephen Collinson in Washington

THE US Supreme Court rejection of military war crimes trials set up by President George W. Bush, could condemn many Guantanamo Bay inmates to a longer legal limbo at the camp.

The president meanwhile, left to digest a severe jolt to his "war on terror tactics", now faces a severe political and legal dilemma.
Should he start back from square one and press Congress to lay down new rules for an amended form of military tribunals?

Or could some or all of the 450 or so inmates still at Guantanamo Bay be tried in US federal courts, by military courts martial, or even sent back to face justice - or freedom - in their own countries?

What the ruling doesn't mean is a swift end to Guantanamo, a running sore in relations with US allies and the Muslim world, which Mr Bush has said he wants to close.

"This will not mean closing down Guantanamo. There's nothing in this opinion that dictates closing down Guantanamo," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

First, administration legal experts had to decide whether there was any room for manoeuvre in the 73-page judgement, accompanied by an equally voluminious collection of supporting and dissenting opinions.

"There are a lot of very smart lawyers trying to pore through each and every part of that to figure out precisely what it does mean," said Mr Snow.

Supreme Court justices who ruled 5-3 that Mr Bush had overreached in setting up the first US war crimes trials since World War II, offered their own way forward.

"Congress has denied the president of the legislative authority to create military commissions of the kind at issue here," they wrote in their opinion.

"Nothing prevents the president returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary."

Mr Bush also appeared to signal in his first reaction, that he had not given up hope of establishing some kind of military tribunal.

"We will analyse the decision. To the extent that the Congress is given any latitude to develop a way forward using military tribunals, we will work with them," he said.

Mr Snow added: "I think the congressional consultation piece is going to be pretty important."

Senator John Warner, chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would make the issue a "top priority".

Representative Jane Harman, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, argued however that Congress had helped create the problem, by failing to outline clear rules on how to deal with "war on terror" detainees.

"As a result, hundreds of individuals are being detained by the US in a legal black hole," she said.

It was unclear, with congressional elections looming, whether legislators would quickly come to the administration's aid.

"I have no idea whether Congress will, after four years of doing nothing on this subject, decide that they suddenly have to pull the administration's cookies out of the fire," said Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

"It will take time. Rome wasn't built in one day."

Mr Bush had argued that he did not need specific congressional approval for the commissions.

But the Court ruled that the administration did not, as it claimed, have authorisation for the tribunals under a sweeping resolution granting him war powers passed after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

The specific case in point related to Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni former driver for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Hamdan's military lawyer Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said he believed the next step would be for his client to receive a "fair trial".

"All that we have been seeking from the beginning is to get that trial. A military court martial, or a federal court case, either of which we're ready to defend against."

Opponents of the Guantanamo military tribunals concluded Mr Bush had only two options.

"Now the president must act: try our clients in lawful US courts or release them," said Michael Ratner, of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which defends many Guantanamo detainees.

The ruling could however conceivably offer a silver lining for some Guantanamo inmates.

The Supreme Court ruled that a new law passed by Congress last year stripping federal courts of jurisdiction over Guantanamo cases, did not apply retroactively to Hamdan's trial.

That could help lawyers who have seen other suspects trapped in a legal morass as they waited for the Supreme Court ruling.