Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Monday called on Congress to craft legislation that would dictate the form of Guantanamo Bay cases in federal court, setting ground rules for evidence, the extent to which detainees may participate in the proceedings and the judiciary’s authority to order their release.
There are roughly 200 Guantanamo Bay cases pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, following the Supreme Court’s June decision granting detainees the right to challenge their captivity. The high court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush stressed a quick resolution for the detainees, some of whom have been held there for more than six years, but it gave the federal district court virtually no guidance as to how the cases should proceed. Mukasey, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, said the executive and the legislative branches were better equipped to fill in the blanks than the judiciary.
