Groups: Detainee cases far-reaching

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear argument on whether terror detainees can be kept from accessing the federal courts, but a ruling could be far-reaching.

Several human rights advocacy groups say an eventual decision in the Guantanamo cases of Boumedienne vs. Bush and Al Odah vs. United States, scheduled before the Supreme Court next Wednesday, could affect the more than 11 million legal immigrants in the United States, and critics see the White House policy on the detainees as part of a larger effort to trim back constitutional rights in general.

Congress passed the Military Commission Act in response to 2004's Rasul vs. Bush, in which the Supreme Court said 6-3 that Guantanamo detainees had a statutory right -- a right under law, not the Constitution -- to ask the judiciary for review of their cases -- the right of habeas corpus.

Essentially overturning the high court ruling, the Military Commission Act and its retroactive provisions say foreign national terror "detainees are precluded from going to court to challenge the factual and legal basis" of their detentions, Jennifer Daskal, senior counter-terrorism for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in a briefing Wednesday.

Many of the 300 detainees left at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will have been held for six years as of February, without trial or charge.

(Boumediene vs. Bush 06-1195; Al Odah v. United States 06-1196)