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Captured Brits 'Have No Rights'
Thursday, August 1, 2002
The Trinity Mirror

The November 13 executive order violates the US Constitution's guarantee of due process, to which any foreign nationals are entitled, according to the complaint. Among other things, it accuses Mr Bush, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Brigadier General Michael Lehnert, commander of the task force running the detention operation, and Colonel Terry Carrico, commandant of Camp X-ray, of withholding the right to a lawyer from the prisoners.

A US judge in Washington ruled today that two British citizens and an Australian captured in Afghanistan and held in Cuba have no right to trial before US courts.

Britons Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal and Australian David Hicks are being held at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to the government.

They were captured while fighting with Taliban and al Qaida forces, U.S. officials allege.

The men's families hired lawyers in the United States who sued the Bush administration, demanding that the men be allowed to argue their case before a federal judge.

But U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the U.S. legal system has no jurisdiction over detainees held in Cuba.

In so doing, she rejected the argument that "our (U.S.) leased military bases abroad which continue under the sovereignty of foreign nations, hostile or friendly, are functionally equivalent to being land borders or ports of entry of the United States or otherwise within the United States."
(More: ICNetwork.co.uk News Source)
2002 © Trinity Mirror Plc.

Dan