Home
News & Action
Alerts Archives Justice Workshop DJAN
History, Purpose & Structure Coordinators & Decisions
Team Registration Contribute with PayPal Call to Justice!
DJAN's Newsletter Links
|
DJAN Disciples
Justice Action Network
[06-28-04]
For Immediate Release
NCC WELCOMES SUPREME COURT RULINGS AFFIRMING DUE PROCESS
June 28, 2004, NEW YORK CITY - The National Council of Churches USA
welcomed today's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that the nearly 600
foreign nationals detained at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo
Bay
have the right to challenge their detention in American courts.
The NCC said the Court's ruling in the consolidated Al Odah v. United
States and Rasul v. Bush supports the Council's moral contention that
there is no land without law.
"At issue here," said the Rev. Dr. Robert W. Edgar, NCC General
Secretary, "is not the guilt or innocence of these terrorism suspects,
but rather their right under the U.S. Constitution and international
law to challenge the legality of their detention.
"If the United States is to model democracy, it must accord due
process to all whom it detains," he said. "It was disingenuous
for
the U.S. Administration to claim that because Guantanamo is not
formally U.S. 'sovereign' territory, the Guanatanamo detainees could
not petition U.S. courts for review of their detention. In fact, the
U.S. courts are the only courts to which these detainees can assert
their innocence, and the Supreme Court’s ruling today recognizes
that."
He called on the United States to move quickly to charge or release
the Guantanamo prisoners, and to give those charged a fair chance to
defend themselves.
The National Council of Churches was among signatories to a "friend
of
the court" brief supporting the due process rights of the Guantanamo
detainees, filed in January by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
In March, the NCC co-sponsored the visit to Washington, D.C., by a
delegation of the international Guantanamo Human Rights Commission,
a
London-based organization that includes relatives of Guantanamo
detainees and others calling for recognition of the detainees' right
to due process.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in today's 6-3 decision on the case Al Odah
v.
United States and Rasul v. Bush, ruled that American courts do have
the jurisdiction to consider the claims of prisoners who say they are
being held illegally in violation of their rights. Foreign nationals
from more than 40 countries have been held at Guantanamo since early
2002, most of them without charge.
The NCC also had signed a "friend of the court" brief in
the case of
terror suspect Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen was captured overseas,
declared an "enemy combatant" and who has been held without
charge for
nearly two years in a U.S. military jail in South Carolina without
any
of the customary protections of the U.S. legal system.
The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling today on the Padilla case did not
address the issue of whether President Bush has the power to hold him.
The Court said only that the case should have been brought in South
Carolina, where Padilla is detained, and not in a federal court in
New
York.
"We regret that the Court chose not to rule on the substance of
Mr.
Padilla's case, but rather effectively to delay justice in the case
by
ruling on a technicality," said Dr. Antonios Kireopoulos said,
NCC
Associate General Secretary for International Affairs and Peace.
But he welcomed the Court's ruling that another American citizen,
Yaser Hamdi, could not be held indefinitely without a chance to
contest his detention. Although the NCC did not file a "friend
of the
court" in that case, he said, the Court's ruling "affirms
the point we
were trying to make in the Padilla case."
-end-
Media Contact: Carol Fouke, NCC, 212-870-2252; cfouke@ncccusa.org
National Council of Churches
475 Riverside Dr, New York
New York 10115-0050
www.ncccusa.org
|
