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The Rule of Law
Detainees may finally get a real day in court
Editorial
The Philadelphia Daily News
July 5, 2006
JUST WHEN you think every branch of the U.S. government is intent on shredding the Constitution, in steps the U.S. Supreme Court to save what's left of our system of justice.
The court last week ruled that the extra-legal tribunal system set up by the Bush administration to try so-called "enemy combatants" at GuantanamoBay is unconstitutional and a violation of international law. A system that relied on torture and hearsay evidence to convict people has been stopped. For now.
Some will foam at the mouth that the ruling is a victory for the terrorists. The truth is, this is a victory for us and for the rule of law.
Remember that the guilt or innocence of anyone being held at GuantanamoBay has been very much in doubt almost from the beginning. Men suspected of being terrorists or associates of al Qaeda were rounded up in Afghanistan and shipped overseas to Cuba.
But as case after case is being processed, it's become apparent that the guiltless were hauled in as often as the guilty, and that innocent men were robbed of years of their lives. Arguments that the court has given "special rights to terrorists" are specious when you realize that hundreds of apparently blameless men were behind bars. The prisons at Guantanamo once held as many as 750 suspects. But in recent months, scores have been released and the number of detainees is now roughly 490. Where were the rights of those who were unfairly taken from their families?
We have no doubt that men with ties to al Qaeda are among the 490. We also have no doubt that men with no intent on being terrorists are also behind bars in Guantanamo. How should the government now proceed to separate the two?
President Bush and Congress can create a court system to deal with the detainees. Nothing in the Supreme Court's ruling deters that.
Already some in Congress, including our own Sen. Arlen Specter, are busy devising proposals. Undoubtedly preserving the status quo in Cuba is on the table. That would be a mistake.
But the Supreme Court has pointed to a better way - using the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, with its traditional rules of evidence.
In seeking justice for 9/11, we shouldn't distort our own system of justice.
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