US human rights activists are hoping the Supreme Court will weigh in soon on the legality of the secretive incarceration of prisoners at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The high court must decide whether to take up requests for a judgment on the matter filed by human rights organizations, diplomats, former judges and retired military officers.

The plaintiffs believe the high court should intervene to declare that President George W. Bush's administration is denying justice to approximately 650 men from 42 countries held prisoner by the United States on Cuba.

They believe that what they consider the Bush administration's abuse of civil liberties under the pretext of the "war on terrorism" will eventually affect all Americans.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has unsuccessfully argued in federal court that the detainees have a right to a lawyer and to appear before a judge.

A series of cases have now been filed with the Supreme Court on behalf of 16 of the prisoners, including Kuwaitis, Australian and British nationals.

Even if the nine justices of the Supreme Court decide to consider the matter, it is difficult to predict how they will respond.

One clue: Chief Justice William Rehnquist has authored a book, "All The Laws But One," 1998, advocating the limitation of civil liberties during wartime.

But earlier this year, one of his colleagues, Justice Stephen Breyer, declared to lawyers in New York: "The Constitution always matters, perhaps particularly so in times of emergency."

A ruling or silence from the Court "will be an important statement either way," predicted lawyer Ira Robbins.

"At least we will find out where the court stands and maybe they will make an important statement protecting civil liberties," argued Robbins, an expert on the Supreme Court.

"We are expecting the Supreme Court to take a stand. It could be in the next few days," said Michael Ratner, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

In a recent editorial the New York Times opined that the Supreme Court "has a duty to step in and stand up for civil liberties."

But the nation's highest court may choose to remain silent, as it did during World War II, refusing to make a statement on the detention of Japanese and Japanese-Americans detained in prison camps in the United States.

To date, federal courts have said that detainees at Guantanamo do not have the same legal rights as prisoners held in the United States due to the legal status and location of the base.

The Bush administration says that the Guantanamo prisoners, most of them captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks, are "illegal combatants," not protected as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

The military enclave on the southeastern edge of Cuba was granted to the United States in a 1934 treaty.

© 2003 AFP

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