High court gives new life to lawsuit by ex-detainees

WASHINGTON —  The Supreme Court revived a lawsuit Monday by four British Muslims who said they were tortured and abused at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and harassed and humiliated during daily prayers.

The former prisoners are attempting to hold top Pentagon officials responsible for the abuse, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The lawsuit was thrown out last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, which concluded that the Guantanamo prisoners had no rights under the Constitution because they were foreigners held by the military.

In a one-line order Monday, the justices set aside the appeals court’s decision and ordered the judges to take a new look at the case.

In June, the Supreme Court rejected the premise that all Guantanamo prisoners had no rights. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices said the Constitution’s protection for the right of habeas corpus extended to all Guantanamo detainees. The decision cleared the way for prisoners to sue for their freedom before a judge.

Citing that ruling, lawyers for the former prisoners at the U.S.-run detention center in Cuba appealed to the high court in August.

“The torture, abuse and religious humiliation of Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay stands as a shameful episode in our history,” their lawyer, Eric Lewis, wrote in his appeal.

The four British men include Shafiq Rasul. He was the lead plaintiff in the 2004 ruling that first granted the right of habeas corpus to prisoners held at Guantanamo.

Rasul, a native of Tipton, England, traveled to Pakistan in 2001 to study computer science. He and three other men went to Afghanistan a few months later to help with a humanitarian crisis. The men were captured by warlords and turned over to U.S. forces. They spent more than two years at Guantanamo before they were freed and returned to England.

In their suit, the men say they were shackled in painful positions, threatened by dogs, subjected to extremes of hot and cold, and harassed during their daily prayers.

Their suit named Rumsfeld and top generals who were in charge of Guantanamo.

Bush administration lawyers had urged the high court to reject the appeal and dismiss the suit.

U.S. Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre said the appeals court had correctly concluded “that military detainees could not impose personal monetary liability on the nation’s military commanders for overseas conditions of confinement during a time of war.”

The justices rejected that idea Monday.

Lewis, the lawyer for the British men, said the court’s action was “a clear signal to the Court of Appeals that its decision . . . was wrong and should be overturned.”

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david.savage@latimes.com