Senior Bush administration officials are considering moving hundreds of detainees from a facility in Cuba to prisons within the United States in response to Supreme Court rulings this week that granted military prisoners access to U.S. courts, officials said Tuesday. As attorneys for detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, began preparing the first of hundreds of expected lawsuits demanding that the government justify the detentions...To avoid ferrying prisoners and government lawyers to federal courts across the country, as might be required, Pentagon and Justice Department officials said they had discussed moving all detainees to a military prison in a conservative judicial district within the United States to enable the consolidation of all the proceedings in one court. They said possible locations could be Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., where there is an Army base with a military prison, or Charleston, S.C., home of the Charleston Naval Weapons Station, which houses the Navy brig.
| Or you could move them to a undisclosed location in a unknown country... |
Another option would be to allow prisoners to file for writs of habeas corpus — a demand for legal justification for their imprisonment — at a makeshift court at the base in Cuba. The Supreme Court left open the possibility of such an option. Under a third proposal offered Justice Department officials and discussed at a high-level interagency meeting Tuesday, a senior administration official said, the administration would ask Congress to designate one federal court district to try the cases — most likely Washington, D.C., or the Eastern District of Virginia, whose jurisdiction includes the Pentagon. Because Guantanamo Bay is not within any federal court jurisdiction, prisoners held there would be allowed to seek redress from any U.S. district court, officials said. "We do expect that people will file in every district in the country. The question is: Is that within the parameters of the Supreme Court’s ruling?" said Corallo of the Justice Department. "That’s what we’ve got to figure out — would we then be forced to respond in 94 different district courts?"
I am very peeved. Not only is this going to cost us taxpayers big bucks in legal fees, but now the scum might be moved to the mainland. Does anyone see the irony of this lunacy? The government is ensuring that terrorists are being transported closer to their targets in the name of upholding "rights" of the former. Nice... |