Nick Cohen (London Observer): Taking liberties

[Jack Rabbit]

Form the London Observer (Sunday supplement of the Guardian Unlimited)
Dated Sunday February 8

Taking liberties
Human rights campaigners want justice for the Guantanamo and Belmarsh detainees. But at what price?
By Nick Cohen

Wendy Patten is the type of brief you want on your side when you get into trouble. Fast-talking, clever and determined to win, the advocacy director of the civil-liberties group, Human Rights Watch, is one of scores of American lawyers fighting to extend the rule of law to Guantanamo Bay. Before she took her campaign to Britain last week, she reasoned there were two means of helping the detainees: either America's allies could put pressure on the Bush administration to soften its policies, or the US Supreme Court could intervene . . . .
The affection for arbitrary justice puts the Government's campaign to free British prisoners from Guantanamo into perspective. Every few weeks stories pop up about how the Attorney General is trying this or that tactic to get them out. Lord Goldsmith may succeed, but his efforts should be seen for what they are: a bid to appease public opinion rather than a principled stand. Blair isn't telling Bush that he can't ignore the Geneva Convention. He's happy for America to carry on with internment (as he's sanctioning internment in Britain, he'd be a hypocrite if he was other than happy). As Amnesty International points out, MI6 agents and Foreign Office diplomats became complicit in the Guantanamo process when they visited the camp and interrogated inmates.
If pressure from allies is not forthcoming, that leaves the American Supreme Court as the only option. Wendy Patten and other lawyers believe there is at least a chance that the judges will intervene. Their guarded optimism will come as a surprise to anyone who has bought the Michael Moore view of the United States. In what has become the received wisdom of the developed world's Left, the Supreme Court with its Republican majority is the plaything of the Bush White House. It provided legal cover for his 'stealing' of the 2000 Presidential election and can be relied upon to do whatever Bush wants it to do. After the massacres of 11 September 2001, the US judiciary was indeed as reluctant as other Americans to fetter the power of the executive, but its deference may be declining.
To date, the war against terrorism has prevented further al-Qaeda attacks against Western countries, and its partial success may be working against Bush. As memories of the atrocity fade, there is a slight chance that the vanity of the judiciary will reassert itself. Judges in general, and American judges in particular, hate limits on their jurisdiction. When they look at Guantanamo they see a legal black hole, a land outside the law where they have no right to intervene.

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