In a move reflecting “apparent frustration over stalled talks with the White House on Guantanamo and detainee issues, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is moving forward — without the Obama administration’s blessing — with legislation to address a series of thorny legal questions raised by the long-term detention of terrorism suspects,” POLITICO reports.
A bill Graham quietly introduced last week would set standards and rules for legal challenges brought by prisoners at Guantanamo as well as other suspected enemy fighters whom U.S. forces may capture in the future.
Analysts said Graham’s unilateral action indicated his negotiations with the White House aren’t likely to bear fruit anytime soon. Graham, they say, may have concluded that filing formal legislation was the best way to pressure the administration into a position on the politically sensitive issue.
Graham’s Terrorist Detention Review Reform Act would, for the first time, have Congress define a profile for an enemy combatant subject to detention, determine how much evidence the government needs to keep a prisoner locked up and authorize courts hearing such cases to consider involuntary statements made by detainees on the battlefield.
Habeas corpus reform has been one of the parts of a so-called grand bargain on Guantanamo-related issues that are the subject of negotiations among Graham, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and White House counsel Bob Bauer.
It was a quiet release:
While Graham’s talks with the White House have been the focus of considerable attention in POLITICO, The New Yorker and elsewhere, his introduction of the habeas bill just before the Senate left for its August recess was unusually low-key for terrorism-related legislation. Graham didn’t hold a news conference, didn’t issue a press release or even a statement; the bill listed no co-sponsors when it was filed Aug. 4. A spokeswoman said Graham was unavailable for comment for this story.
Civil liberties groups “and lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners immediately criticized Graham’s bill.”
However, several advocates who follow the issue said the main impetus behind it has largely evaporated, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a series of recent rulings that resolved earlier lower-court disagreements.
“It would be odd to push this now that the D.C. Circuit is really clarifying the rules,” said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. “The pragmatic arguments for [legislation] are becoming less and less forceful as time goes and the pragmatic arguments against it are becoming greater and greater. This would create another novel and confusing set of rules people have no experience implementing.”
(credit image – daylife/reuters)
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