Supreme Court rules for Guantanamo prisoners

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Guantanamo Bay prisoners can go before U.S. federal judges to challenge their years-long detention, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a landmark decision that delivered another setback for President George W. Bush's war on terrorism.

By a 5-4 vote, the nation's highest court struck down the law Bush pushed through the Republican-led Congress in 2006 that took away the habeas corpus rights of the terrorism suspects to seek full judicial review of their detention.

"We'll abide by the court's decision. That doesn't mean I have to agree with it," Bush told a news conference in Rome, where he was on a weeklong European visit. "We'll study this opinion and we'll do so ... to determine whether or not additional legislation might be appropriate."

The Justice Department said trials underway at Guantanamo will continue despite the ruling expanding detainee rights.

"Military commission trials will ... continue to go forward," said Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr. He said the Supreme Court ruling involved the status of detainees held as enemy combatants during continuing hostilities, and not the trials themselves.

In its fourth major ruling rejecting the administration's war-on-terrorism arguments, the Supreme Court restored the detainees' rights under habeas corpus, a long-standing legal principle by which people can challenge their imprisonment.

"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the court's 70-page majority opinion.

Some detainees have been held for six years, without any definitive judicial determination of their detention, he said, adding the war on terrorism, which began Sept 11, 2001, has already become among the longest wars in American history.

Kennedy said Congress had failed to create an adequate alternative for the prisoners held at the U.S. military base in Cuba to contest their detention.

The 2006 law allowed for only a limited review by a U.S. appeals court in Washington of the military's designation of the prisoners as "enemy combatants."

Kennedy said the court's ruling did not address whether Bush has the power to detain the prisoners. He said this and other questions on the legality of their detention must be resolved by the federal judges. The detainees are entitled to prompt hearings, he said.

Chief Justice John Roberts in dissent wrote that the American people "lost a bit more control over the conduct of this nation's foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges."

And Justice Antonin Scalia wrote of the ruling, "Most tragically it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving in a civilian court ... that evidence supports the confinement of each and every prisoner."

REPUDIATES BUSH'S POLICY

Amnesty International, which has campaigned for the prisoners' rights, welcomed the ruling.