Court Wants More Guantanamo Arguments

Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed seen in this Tuesday July 13, 2004 file photograph, in Alcala Meco, Spain. The only Spanish citizen to have been held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, has been ordered to be released from a Spanish jail. The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a terrorism conviction against Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, saying there was no evidence to back up charges he was a member of al-Qaida. (AP Photo/Denis Doyle, File) (Denis Doyle - AP)

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court granted a Bush administration request to make more legal arguments over the fate of hundreds of lawsuits filed by detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A three-judge panel set a schedule for lawyers for the government and the detainees to provide their views in writing over the next few weeks about the impact of the Supreme Court's ruling in June in the case of Osama bin Laden's driver.

In a rebuke of President Bush, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 that his plan to hold criminal trials before military tribunals for some of the Guantanamo detainees violates U.S. and international law.

"It's distressing," said detainee lawyer Thomas B. Wilner, who opposed the government's request for another round of briefing on the issue. "This case has now been pending for two years."

The order filed Wednesday means there will be a rare fourth round of legal filings to determine the fate of lawsuits that detainees filed challenging the legality of their detentions.

The justices, in the June ruling on bin Laden's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, also said a law passed by Congress late last year to limit lawsuits filed by Guantanamo detainees does not apply to pending cases like that of Hamdan.

By the time the law was passed in December, civil cases had been filed on behalf of hundreds of detainees.

In 2004, the Supreme Court said detainees can challenge the legality of their detentions. Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act to limit those lawsuits and to set up a process for detainees to challenge their designations as "enemy combatants."

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has already heard arguments twice _ in September 2005 and in March _ in appeals filed by both sides challenging conflicting rulings by trial judges on whether the lawsuits can proceed.

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