Guantanamo prisoners cannot challenge their detention before US federal judges, an appeals court ruled today in upholding a key part of a tough anti-terrorism law sought by President George W. Bush.
By a 2-1 vote in a major victory for the Mr Bush administration, the US Court of Appeals ruled the law that Congress passed last year took away the rights of the prisoners at the US military base in Cuba to bring such cases and that hundreds of their lawsuits must be dismissed.
"Federal courts have no jurisdiction in these cases," Judge A. Raymond Randolph concluded for the court majority in his 25-page opinion issued by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said they planned to appeal the ruling to the US Supreme Court, which has previously handed setbacks to the Bush administration over handling of its war on terrorism.
There currently are about 395 detainees at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, including Osama bin Laden's driver in Afghanistan, who has challenged the law.
The first prisoners arrived more than five years ago following the September 11th attacks, and the base has been a central and controversial part of Mr Bush's war on terrorism.
The indefinite and incontestable nature of the Guantanamo prisoners' detention and allegations of prisoner mistreatment, which the US military denies, have tarnished the United States' image abroad, and a growing chorus of allies have urged the United States to shut down the camp.
Lawyers for two groups of prisoners -- including about 40 detainees still at Guantanamo such as Australian David Hicks and six Algerians captured in Bosnia -- argued before the court the new law did not apply to their clients.
They said it violated the US Constitution's clause that prevents the suspension of habeas corpus rights except in times of rebellion or invasion. Those longstanding rights allow someone being being held to challenge their detention.
The appeals court, however, rejected both positions and said the law explicitly said it applied to all cases without exception.
"It is almost as if the proponents of these words were slamming their firsts on the table shouting 'When we say 'all', we mean all -- without exception!" the court majority said.