NEW YORK - JUNE 29 - In an extremely rare move, the Supreme Court announced today, its final day in session, that it had reversed itself and decided to hear the cases of the Guantánamo detainees during its next session (which begins in October 2007).

Two cases, challenging the government's assertion that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) stripped the courts of the right to hear detainees' challenges to their detention, were consolidated. The Court had denied the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and co-counsel's motion to hear the cases in April. The court today vacated that order and granted the petitions, a move that requires five votes.

Attorneys had filed rehearing petitions outlining the ways in which the current process was not working and asking the court to reconsider review. In the denial of certiorari, three justices had dissented and two, Justices Stevens and Kennedy, issued a statement that the detainees should exhaust the process set up by the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), allowing for limited appeals from the decisions of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT's), before they would consider ruling on constitutional questions. However, the two Justices made a point of noting that the Court could revisit the case if it turned out that the DTA process provided an "inadequate remed[y]," if the "Government unreasonably delayed proceedings" under the DTA, or if the "government were to take additional steps to prejudice the position of detainees in seeking review in this Court."

"With so many recent revelations about the fundamental flaws in the CSRT process, the government's attempts to restrict attorney access to the base, and with detainees recently being sent back to near certain torture in Libya and Tunisia, the Court would have every reason to be concerned that the process is not working," said Shayana Kadidal, Managing Attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative.

"The Supreme Court will now seek for the third time to resolve the fate of these detainees - three quarters of whom the military admits it will never charge - who have languished without any meaningful way to challenge their detention for more than five years," said CCR President Michael Ratner. "The processes the government put in place are a sham-they allow the use of evidence obtained through torture and no real review of the facts. The fundamental right of habeas corpus is what protects all of us from the whims of tyrants and kings."

Attorneys with the Center made the following points about the CSRT's:

- The CSRT's are a sham process where the government controls what evidence and witnesses are permitted, evidence obtained by torture is permissible, and the detainees have no lawyer representing them and no guarantee of due process.

- The DTA review in the Court of Appeals only allows review of whether the government adhered to its own rules, and contains no provision for considering additional facts not allowed to be considered in the CSRT process.

- The scope of whom the president can label an "enemy combatant" is ever-shifting and virtually without limit.

- Some detainees were sent through the CSRT process as many as three times until they were found guilty-the process is designed to get the government the results it wants.

The Supreme Court affirmed the detainees' right to habeas corpus review both in CCR's landmark case Rasul v. Bush in 2004 and in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in 2006. The Center for Constitutional Rights represents many of the detainees at Guantánamo and coordinates the work of nearly 500 pro bono attorneys.

About CCR

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is a non-profit legal and educational organization dedicated to protecting and advancing the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights demonstrators in the South, CCR is committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change."

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