The United States might
head off legal challenges to detentions of suspected Al
Qaeda and Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay by releasing
those who no longer need to be held , a Pentagon spokesman
said.
The US policy of indefinite detentions
of "illegal combatants" captured in the war
on terrorism was thrown into question earlier this week
when Supreme Court affirmed the right of detainees at
Guantanamo to challenge their detention in US courts.
Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said no
decision had been made on how to respond to Supreme Court
rulings this week, but he said "everybody has a desire
not to hold people that need not be held."
"It is conceivable that people who
can be determined no longer needing to be held, need not
necessarily be part of a judicial process if we can make
that determination short of a judicial process,"
he said.
DiRita noted that a panel has been formed
under Navy Secretary Gordon England to do case-by-case
reviews of detainees at Guantanamo to determine whether
they no longer pose a threat and can be released.
"If there are people that can be
released, after some due process of review that we've
established, it's worth considering whether that's the
right next thing to do, and we can do that and remain
consistent with the Supreme Court ruling," he said.
About 595 suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda
prisoners are being held at Guantanamo, most of whom were
captured in Afghanistan more than two years ago. The Pentagon
has released 134 other detainees following agreements
with the governments of the nationals involved.
Another six detainees have been designated
as candidates for trial by special US military commissions,
but charges have only been filed against three detainees
more than two years after their capture.
The Supreme Court ruling raised the prospect
of court challenges across the country on behalf of the
remaining prisoners at the maximum security detention
center at a US naval base in Guantanamo.
The Los Angeles Times reported this week
that one option under consideration by Pentagon and Justice
Department lawyers was to move the prisoners from Guantanamo
to a detention facility in the United States so that all
proceedings could be consolidated in one place.
DiRita evaded a question about whether
such a move was under consideration. He said lawyers from
across the government were examining the rulings "to
understand them, first and foremost, and see what the
intent of the rulings was."
Asked in a radio interview on Wednesday
for the administration's response to the high court's
ruling, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "Well,
thus far, it's been silence and consideration."
Rumsfeld has said in the past that evidence
that would stand up in court was often lacking against
detainees because of the chaotic conditions under which
they were captured.
The US interest was to keep them off the
battlefield and hold them as long as they might be of
intelligence value, he has said. The US government believed
the remote US navy base in Cuba was beyond the reach of
the US courts, and so built a large prison facility there
to house prisoners captured during the war in Afghanistan
in 2001
