Holding of Afghan Fighters Challenged

A coalition of Los Angeles clergy, lawyers and academics argued Friday that U.S. federal courts have authority over the 188 Afghan fighters held captive at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

In a legal brief filed in Los Angeles federal court, the coalition also disputed government claims that the group has no standing to bring a lawsuit on behalf of the detainees.

U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz will hear arguments Thursday.

The ad hoc coalition, organized by civil rights lawyer Stephen Yagman, filed suit Jan. 20, demanding that the detainees be brought before a civilian court in the United States.

The coalition contends that the men are being held in violation of the Geneva Convention and the U.S. Constitution.

On Thursday, the White House announced that Taliban fighters being held at Guantanamo will be protected under the Geneva Convention but will not be classified as prisoners of war. Al Qaeda captives will neither be protected by the convention nor considered POWs.

Legal sources said Friday that the administration’s announcement is not likely to have any immediate impact on the case before Matz.

At present, the only issues before him are the coalition’s right to sue and the court’s jurisdiction. At a hearing last month, the Los Angeles jurist expressed doubts about his authority to intervene. Nevertheless, he directed both sides to file briefs on the issues.

In a brief last week, government attorneys cited a 1950 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving German nationals seized at the end of World War II and taken to an American-run prison in occupied Germany.

The court held that the prisoners could not file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. courts because they were captured and at all times held outside U.S. sovereign territory.

In the current case, the government argued that Cuba retained sovereignty to Guantanamo when it leased the base to the United States in perpetuity in 1903.

The coalition disagreed in its response Friday. “As a matter of internationally known fact,” Yagman wrote, “it is the United States of America, with its finger stuck in the eye of President Fidel Castro of Cuba, who exercises complete control, both de facto and de jure, over the Cuban geography.”

The group also took issue with the government’s argument that the coalition had no right to file suit on behalf of the detainees because it has no personal connections with any of them. The group said the habeas corpus statute allows for third-party intervention in cases like this one.

Laced with quotes from Shakespeare and Mick Jagger, the brief attacked what it described as America’s “war mongering, macho and swaggering government.”