Bush ‘overstepped’ mark on war crimes trials

THE US Supreme Court ruled yesterday that President George W Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under US law and the Geneva conventions.

The case focused on Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan, 36, has spent four years in the US prison in Cuba. He faces a single count of conspiring against US citizens from 1996 to November 2001.

Two years ago, the court rejected Bush’s claim to have the authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny them access to courts or lawyers. In this follow-up case, the justices focused solely on the issue of trials for some of the men.

The vote was split 5-3, with moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy joining the court’s liberal members in ruling against the Bush administration. Chief Justice John Roberts, named to the lead the court last September by Bush, was sidelined because as an appeals court judge he had backed the government over Hamdan.

Yesterday’s ruling overturned that decision.

Bush spokesman Tony Snow said the White House would have no comment until lawyers reviewed the decision.

The Bush administration has hinted recently that it was prepared for the Supreme Court to setback plans for trying Guantanamo detainees.

“I’d like to close Guantanamo,” the president said. “I also recognise that we’re holding some people that are darn dangerous.”

The court’s ruling says nothing about whether the prison should be shuttered, dealing only with plans to put detainees by trial.

“Trial by military commission raises separation-of-powers concerns of the highest order,” Kennedy wrote in his opinion.

However, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a strongly worded dissent and took the unusual step of reading part of it from the bench — something he had never done before in his 15 years. He said the court’s decision would “sorely hamper the president’s ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy.”

The prison at Guantanamo Bay has been a flash point for international criticism. Hundreds of people suspected of ties to al Qaida and the Taliban have been swept up by the US military and secretly shipped there since 2002.