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.