But your honor, I strenuously object!

June 13th, 2008

Bush administration disagrees with ruling on detainees – Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration disagrees strongly with a Supreme Court decision that gives suspected terrorists the right to go to federal court to seek their release from indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Friday the deeply divided high court ruling would not affect the Guantanamo trials against enemy combatants and President Bush said he might seek a new law to keep the alleged terrorists in a U.S. prison.

Thursday’s much-anticipated 5-to-4 ruling was the third time the justices have repudiated Bush on his ambitious and hugely controversial schemes to hold the suspects outside the protections of U.S. law.

Speaking at a Group of Eight meeting of justice and home affairs ministers in Tokyo, Mukasey said, “I’m disappointed with the decision, in so far as I understand that it will result in hundreds of actions challenging the detention of enemy combatants to be moved to federal district court.”

He added: “I think it bears emphasis that the court’s decision does not concern military commission trials, which will continue to proceed. Instead it addresses the procedures that the Congress and the president put in place to permit enemy combatants to challenge their detention.”

He said the Justice Department would comply with the ruling while studying the decision and “whether any legislation or any other action may be appropriate.”

In writing for the court majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy acknowledged the terrorism threat the country faces — the administration’s justification for the detentions — but he declared, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”

Mood : tired