Closing the Courtroom Door

Late last week, the Justice Department asked the federal district court here in DC to throw out all pending habeas petitions by Gitmo detainees. But, you ask, didn't the MCA strip their ability to file habeas petitions? And the answer is ostensibly yes, but you had more than 200 habeas petitions, filed before passage of the MCA, that are on hold (stayed) while the court waits for the results of a challenge to the MCA.FYI, the only avenue for review available now is in the federal appeals court here in the DC Circuit. That review, however, is quite limited. First, the detainees (until they've been tried under a military commission) may only challenge the determination of what's called the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (which go in military circles by the ungainly acronym CSRT--pronounced C-Certs, kind of like those delicious breath mints).Now, when the detainee challenges the breath mint tribunal in the DC Circuit, he may only challenge whether the body followed its own procedures. He may not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence, etc., etc. And, in the interests of further exposition, note that the CSRTs are the body that essentially determines whether the detainee is an "enemy combatant," meaning that they can be held until the end of hostilities--something that for the "war on terrorism," in the words of ACLU super-lawyer Ben Wizner, is a "distant abstraction."More on this as events warrant.