The court said it would examine the legality of the military tribunals in early 2006, though the US Defense Department said it still wanted to start the first trial this month of accused "Australian Taliban" David Hicks.

"We're assessing the decision of the Surpreme Court," Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said. Whitman said he was unaware of any plan to postpone Hicks' trial.

The Supreme Court challenge was launched by lawyers for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who like Hicks has been held at the controversial camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba since 2002.

Hamdan and Hicks were first detained in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Hamdan has been charged with conspiracy to stage attacks on civilians, murder and terrorism. He has denied the charges.

He is one of four inmates to have had preliminary hearings before the special military tribunals at Guantanamo, which have been widely criticized by human rights groups, though the US government has insisted they are fair and legal.

A federal court rule in November last year that the military commissions would violate Hamdan's rights and that he should not be tried until a proper body had decided whether he was a prisoner-of-war.

But a US appeals court ruled on July 15 that the military trials were legal. The three-judge court included John Roberts, who was recently appointed the Supreme Court's new chief justice.

The July ruling was seen as a victory for President George W. Bush's administration and its treatment of detainees from the US war on terrorism.

The Appeals Court said that the 1949 Geneva Convention on prisoner of war rights did not apply to Hamdan and that the US Congress had authorized the military commission.

Due to his role in the appeals court decision, Roberts will have to recuse himself from Hamdan's Supreme Court hearing, leaving the decision to eight of the nine judges.

Eugene Fidell, a jurist and member of the National Institute of Military Justice, said the court's decision to have a hearing will likely cause the suspension of the military trials of other detainees, including Hicks.

Hicks, whose trial is due to start on November 18, is accused of fighting alongside the Taliban against US-led forces who invaded after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The Muslim covert from Adelaide, Australia is facing charges of attempted murder and aiding the enemy after allegedly training at Al-Qaeda-linked military camps.

Fidell, a critic of the procedures put in place by the Bush administration, welcomed the court's decision to take the case.

"It's important to take it now," he told AFP. "Almost regardless to how it comes out, it's important to send a message around the world that the issues presented in this case are very important and they are getting attention at the highest level of our governmental system, including the courts."

Fifteen detainees at Guantanamo have now been designated for military commission trials. Four have been formally charged, incluiding Hamdan, Hicks, another Yemeni and a Sudanese man.

Around 500 detainees are held at the US military detention facility, which was set up in 2002 soon after the start of the US-led offensive against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

Analysis: Human Rights Groups Press U.S.
United Nations (UPI) Nov 07 - With the recent uncovering of covert prison camps being run by the CIA across three continents and the U.S. Defense Department remaining steadfast on keeping U.N. inspectors from interviewing detainees in the Guantanamo Bay detention center, international human rights organizations continue to pressure the United States and its allies in an era of terrorism.

By Tanveer Ali
UPI Correspondent

The Washington Post reported last Wednesday about the existence of clandestine interrogation facilities, known in classified U.S. government documents as "black sites," which were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and located in eight countries, including Afghanistan, Thailand, and several Eastern European nations.

The report elicited long-repeated pleas for access from various organizations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, the U.N. Human Rights Committee and the U.N. special rapporteur on torture to U.S. detention camps, as well as a call for investigation from the European Union and the Council of Europe, Europe's leading human rights organization in which Eastern European nations are involved.

"We have to find out what is exactly happening," Friso Roscam Abbing, an EU spokesman, told reporters Thursday. "We have all heard about this."

The existence of such prisons on the continent's soil would violate European human rights principles. Under U.S. law, the existence of such facilities on U.S. soil is illegal.

On Thursday, New York-based Human Rights Watch said it had evidence from an analysis of flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004 that indicates that suspected terrorists may have been transported from Afghanistan to Poland and Romania. Both Warsaw and Bucharest deny ever hosting secret detention centers.

Antonella Notari, chief spokeswoman of the ICRC, said the organization had requested access to all detainees being held off of American soil.

That same day, the U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva said it had received two letters and a report from the United States addressing the issue of detainees. The committee has yet to study the documents.

The likelihood and fruits of fact-finding missions remains unclear. In June 2004, U.N. special rapporteurs on various human rights issues requested the U.S. Department of Defense private access to 520 detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Last month, in a letter on behalf of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon invited with a series of conditions, including one that denies the United Nations private interviews with detainees, for a (possible Dec. 6) visit by U.N. inspectors.

Manfred Nowak, U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said Oct. 31, "In the spirit of compromise, we have accepted some of the conditions. ... But, there are no convincing reasons why we should be exempted from these standards of fact-finding missions."

Nowak acknowledged the Pentagon has given as an explanation to its denial that, in principle, there is still a war going on. Nowak added, "They said they have nothing to hide. So if they have nothing to hide, why shouldn't we be able to interview detainees in private?"

In response, Rumsfeld told reporters Nov. 1, while the United Nations may not be given total access to detainees, the ICRC has been in Guantanamo Bay since the start.

"This is a government decision, a matter of policy as to what extent they want to open that aperture and allow any number of additional organizations that exist in the world to do that, they've -- apparently the United States government's made a decision -- not the Pentagon, but the government's made a decision that they think that having the ICRC do that is the appropriate thing. And so that's that."

Katherine Newell Bierman, counterterrorism council for the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch, told United Press International that "to say that the ICRC is there is not valid enough to keep out other inspectors." Currently, the ICRC is the only international organization allowed access to detainees being held in Guantanamo Bay. The ICRC does not make its findings public.

Nowak accused the United States of a double standard, citing that through much convincing, China has agreed to accept a visit in two weeks of U.N. special rapporteurs to its detention centers and providing for private interviews with detainees.

"It's not even as a matter of humanism or what the right thing is to do. What's the prudent thing to do is being able to send in people to say that these people are or are not being abused."

Bierman said that like the Guantanamo detainees, the international community and human rights organizations need to pressure the United States and the host countries of the secret facilities into being more forthcoming.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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