Justices to Hear Case of Citizen Held as Enemy

[kskiska]

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 — The Supreme Court, significantly expanding its review of the Bush administration's treatment of those deemed "enemy combatants," agreed Friday to hear a challenge by an American of Saudi descent, Yaser Esam Hamdi, to his open-ended confinement at a military brig in South Carolina.

A federal appeals court ruled last year that regardless of citizenship, a person "captured in a zone of active combat" in a foreign country could not gain access to court to contest the factual basis for his detention. Mr. Hamdi was fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan in late 2001, the government says, when his unit surrendered to the Northern Alliance, with which American forces were aligned. He has been held for two years without charges and, until last month, without access to a lawyer.

In the decision last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., accepted a two-page declaration by a Pentagon official as a "sufficient basis" for concluding that Mr. Hamdi's confinement was within the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief.

"No further factual inquiry is necessary or proper," the appeals court said.

(snip)

At the same time, it is evident that the administration went to unusual lengths to dissuade the court from accepting the Hamdi case. On Dec. 2, the day before the administration's reply to Mr. Hamdi's initial brief was due at the court, the Pentagon announced that "as a matter of discretion and military policy," it would now give him access to a lawyer, a development that Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson then noted in the administration's brief.

more…
http://nytimes.com/2004/01/10/national/10SCOT.html?hp

[goforit]

1. Something smells fishy for the Pentagon to change it's tune.

Hmmmmm..........