‘The sun is about to shine at Guantánamo’

A federal court has, once again, slapped down the Bush Administration over its military torture chamber at Guantanamo Bay Cuba.

In a landmark ruling Friday, a federal appeals court ordered the Bush Administration to turn over virtually all its information on detainees at the prison where thousands have been held in cognito and without the due process accorded prisoners under our justice system.

The decision is another stunning defeat of the Bush Administration’s policies of ignoring the basic rights of the Constitution and the rights of those accused of crimes.

The decision most certainly won’t stop Bush from trying to bypass basic human rights but it will mark another milestone in his seven-year journey to destroy the Constitution and and the basic beliefs in freedom that used to define America.

Reports The New York Times:

Unless
the Justice Department obtains a stay, the decision, from the United
States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, will
clear the way for detainees’ lawyers to press 180 appeals cases of
Guantánamo inmates challenging their detentions. The cases contest
decisions by military panels that the men are properly held as unlawful
enemy combatants.

In the new decision, Chief Judge Douglas H.
Ginsburg of the District of Columbia Circuit wrote that letting the
government withhold information on detainees from their lawyers and the
court “would render utterly meaningless judicial review” of the
military panels’ decisions.

The full appeals court, in a 5-to-5
decision, declined to reconsider a decision last year by a three-judge
panel from that court. A majority vote was needed to reconsider.

Susan
Baker Manning, a lawyer for detainees, said the ruling would force the
government to reveal what it knows about detainees, rather than holding
men indefinitely on generalizations and secret accusations.

“The sun is about to shine at Guantánamo,” Ms. Manning said.