Guantanomo FACTBOX and Guardian back articles

Fawzi al-Odah is one of three
Kuwaitis still held in Guantanamo

FACTBOX: Quotes on Guantanamo case at Supreme Court

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on Wednesday in a case to decide the legal rights of terrorism suspects held in the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Following are quotes about the case taken from legal briefs and interviews.

U.S. GOVERNMENT (in brief):

"Congress has authorized a war against an international terrorist organization with no uniformed soldiers, and the detention of its members and supporters is a critical component of any such war."

JENNIFER DASKAL, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH (interview):

"It's not just about the Guantanamo detainees. It's about basic checks and balances and the U.S. system of government, and ensuring that even the president is not above the law."

U.N. HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS (in brief):

"The United States is obliged to respect and ensure the rights set forth in (the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights). The current system fails to do so. This court should ensure that provisions of domestic law are construed and applied consistent with the United States' continued commitment to the protection of human rights."

RETIRED U.S. MILITARY OFFICERS (in brief)

"If the United States detains 'enemy combatants' without providing a fair and meaningful hearing, it increases the likelihood that foreign forces capturing American troops in the future will ignore the Geneva conventions entirely -- thereby putting the lives of American prisoners at risk."

THE FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES (in brief):

"(Granting detainees broad rights to challenge their confinement) would invite massive detainee litigation, clogging the federal courts and enabling our enemies to wage a propaganda war against us using the platform of our own legal system."

WASHINGTON LEGAL FOUNDATION AND RETIRED GENERALS AND ADMIRALS (in brief):

"The United States can be justly proud of the humane and fair manner in which it has treated those prisoners (at Guantanamo). In particular, the Executive Branch and Congress have worked together to devise a system for ensuring that prisoners not charged with crimes do not remain in detention."

DAVID CYNAMON, LEAD ATTORNEY FOR DETAINEE FAWZI AL ODAH AND OTHERS IN THE CASE (in interview):

"As this stretches out, (our clients) certainly have no belief or faith in the American system of justice. When I tell them about the Supreme Court arguments coming up, they said:

'That's just a joke. Two years ago we were told that the Supreme Court had ruled in our favor and we're still here.'"

(Writing by Randall Mikkelsen and Paul Grant)

Honour Bound

• Guardian, Friday November 16 2007
• Lyn Gardner

The lonely figure of a man in an orange jumpsuit spins in the air. The cage around him goes in and out of focus. Just watching him makes you feel dizzy. What might it feel like to be incarcerated in Guantýnamo? Dealing with the isolation? The daily emotional and physical assaults on your mind and body, sanctioned by the US government? Spending months in solitary confinement (...)

(...) sequence in which an inmate keeps trying to run over the Geneva Convention, his body jerking and twitching as he is repeatedly thrown (...)

• Captive audience

  • Guardian Unlimited, Friday March 30 2007
  • Ros Taylor
  LETTERS FROM TEHRAN Another day, another letter purportedly authored by Faye Turney, the British sailor who is now the focus of the standoff between London and Tehran. This one calls on a "representative" of the Commons to consider withdrawing British forces from Iraq. The Sun calls the letter "despicable" and castigates the UN security council for its failure to "bellow (...)

  (...) after capture" has changed. The Geneva convention stipulates that captured personnel (...)
  

• Guantanamo Bay}&lpos={results-main-articles}{4}"> Guantanamo Bay

  • Guardian Unlimited, Wednesday January 10 2007
  What is Guantanamo Bay? It is a US naval base on the eastern tip of Cuba which, for the past five years, has been used as a detention centre for suspected terrorists, mainly captured in Afghanistan during the US assault following the September 11 attacks. Those held are suspected of fighting for the Taliban or being operatives for al-Qaida, and are considered "enemy (...)

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• Even a bag-lady can teach Bush about human rights

  • Observer, Sunday September 10 2006
  • Henry Porter
  An elaborately turned-out bag-lady of the sort you occasionally see in Manhattan - a former fashion editor, perhaps, or designer who has lost her mind but not her style - stopped in front of all the people sunning themselves in Bryant Park and shouted at me: 'I obey the constitution.' I wish I had had the wit to shout back: 'Which is more than your President.' What Bush is (...)

  (...) and tried at Guantanamo. The proposed courts...constitution and the Geneva Convention, the Supreme (...)
  

• What a difference a day makes

  • Observer, Sunday July 2 2006
  • Stephanie Merritt
  Tonight, maverick counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer will save the world (or at least the part of it that matters most, the greater Los Angeles area) from Armageddon for the fifth time. Not that I want to give away the ending, but the fact that Fox has commissioned a sixth season of 24 and optioned a seventh and eighth and a possible feature film is a clue that Bauer will (...)

• Now, it's even considered seditious to read my article

  • Observer, Sunday July 2 2006
  • Henry Porter
  The sign that Steve Jago held on 18 June in Whitehall carried a quote from George Orwell. 'In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.' It comes from Nineteen Eighty-Four and it is perhaps worth speculating what Eric Blair would have thought of a law that allows a young man to be arrested for displaying a placard outside Downing Street. He would (...)

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Let's hear it for Belgium

• Guardian, Tuesday May 20 2003
• George Monbiot

Belgium is becoming an interesting country. In the course of a week, it has managed to upset both liberal opinion in Europe - by granting the far-right Vlaams Blok 18 parliamentary seats - and illiberal opinion in the US. On Wednesday, a human rights lawyer filed a case with the federal prosecutors whose purpose is to arraign Thomas Franks, the commander of the American (...)

(...) breached protocol II to the Geneva conventions, which prohibits "violence to (...)