wfn.org | NCC Welcomes Supreme Court Rulings Affirming Due Process

["Carol Fouke" <cfouke@ncccusa.org>]

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
Courtbs 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
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