Suspending habeas corpus: "Guantánamo and the military commissions are implements for breaking the law"

we continue to pick up speed as we race madly down the hill toward an authoritarian dictatorship...

A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a new law stripping federal judges of authority to review foreign prisoners’ challenges to their detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

[...]

Two of the three appeals court judges, citing Supreme Court and other historical precedent, held that the right of habeas corpus did not extend to foreign citizens detained outside the United States.

[...]

The dissenting judge on Tuesday, Judith W. Rogers, said the new law did violate the constitutional provision restricting the suspension of habeas corpus.

Administration officials welcomed the decision as a vindication of its position on the rights of detainees, after years of its halting efforts to create a legal process that would withstand tests in court.

detainees' rights...? please... let's step back and review the situation for a moment, shall we...? as i posted last week...

The whole purpose of setting up Guantánamo Bay is for torture. Why do this? Because you want to escape the rule of law. There is only one thing that you want to escape the rule of law to do, and that is to question people coercively—what some people call torture. Guantánamo and the military commissions are implements for breaking the law.

—Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, January 2007, to the author, Marie Brenner, in the article, Taking on Guantánamo, Vanity Fair, March 2007.

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