Mukasey urges more Guantanamo debate
Says Congress should set rules for detainees
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Michael Mukasey yesterday urged lawmakers to step into the debate over how the US legal system should handle claims by detainees at the US naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, Mukasey called on Congress to help answer difficult questions about the rights that should be afforded to hundreds of enemy combatants.
Mukasey raised several critical issues left unanswered by a Supreme Court ruling last month that gave more than 260 terrorism suspects the right to challenge their detention in American courts.
The attorney general said Congress should develop rules for handling classified information in the forthcoming court proceedings, so they do not become "a smorgasbord of . . . information for our enemies." He also asked lawmakers to prohibit detainees whose home countries would not accept their return from being released inside the United States.
The Bush administration in high-level policy meetings has begun to consider closing the facility at Guantanamo Bay.
Where enemy combatants should be housed is touching off furious debate in academic circles and among lawmakers, who are opposing the prospect that detainees be moved from Cuba into maximum-security US prisons in their home states.
"The responsibility of moving forward rests with the legislative and executive branches as much as it does with the judiciary," Mukasey said.
It remains unclear whether the current Congress could develop a compromise plan that would cover the sensitive issue with only weeks remaining in its legislative calendar.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, has said lawmakers have only five more weeks to legislate this year.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, said the issue would be better addressed in the next Congress with a new president.
For now, the bulk of the habeas corpus cases in which prisoners are challenging the basis for their detention is being considered in a federal court in the District, where judges are struggling to coordinate procedures for moving forward.
The Justice Department has sought further delays while it recruits lawyers to handle the press of litigation, but US District Judge Thomas Hogan recently warned that patience was wearing thin.
Mukasey, a retired federal court judge, said Congress should weigh in to guard against judges imposing a patchwork of conflicting rules that could produce confusion, more court challenges, and even lengthier delays for prisoners who have been held for as long as seven years.
Under the plan that Mukasey talked about yesterday, the US government could hold prisoners indefinitely so long as the armed conflict with Al Qaeda persisted. 