US court won't hear appeal by Guantanamo prisoners

WASHINGTON, Apr 30 (Reuters) The US Supreme Court declined today to hear an appeal by two Guantanamo prisoners who face trial before a military tribunal and who sought review now of an anti-terrorism law that President George W Bush pushed through Congress last year.

The high court sided with the Bush administration, which argued that the trials should be allowed to take place first before the two men could bring an appeal.

Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer said they would hear the appeal but it takes four votes for the nine-member Supreme Court to do so.

The case involved Omar Khadr, 20, a Canadian accused of murder and other crimes, and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was Osama bin Laden's driver in Afghanistan and who won a landmark US Supreme Court ruling in June last year.

In that decision, the Supreme Court struck down as illegal the initial military tribunal system created by Bush to try terrorism suspects being held at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba.

That ruling prompted Bush to go to Congress and get authority under the law he signed in October last year for tough interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects under a new military tribunal system.

The law also took away the right of the prisoners to challenge their confinement before US federal judges.

The Supreme Court in early April rejected, for now, appeals by two different groups of Guantanamo prisoners. Their challenge to the law was similar to the one brought by lawyers for Hamdan and Khadr.

There are about 385 detainees at Guantanamo. The first prisoners arrived more than five years ago after the United States began what Bush called a war on terrorism in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

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