John McCain criticized a Supreme Court decision Thursday granting constitutional rights to foreign terrorism suspects, a ruling that was applauded by rival Barack Obama.
“It obviously concerns me — these are unlawful combatants; they are not American citizens,” McCain told reporters.
Obama welcomed the 5-4 ruling, which allows enemy combatants awaiting military tribunals at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to appeal their cases to U.S. civilian courts.
“The court’s decision is a rejection of the Bush administration’s attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo — yet another failed policy supported by John McCain,” Obama said.
McCain drew attention to the dissent of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who lambasted the court’s liberal justices for striking down “the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants.”
McCain’s opposition to the ruling puts him in the same camp as President Bush, who told reporters in Rome, “I strongly agree with those who dissented.”
Roberts and three fellow conservatives on the court, Samuel Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, objected to the majority ruling.
The court’s majority, which consisted of moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy and liberals John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer, ruled that detainees “have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus.”
“The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times,” the court ruled. “Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law.”
It was the third such ruling by the court and it directly contradicted the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which limited detainees to military tribunals.
“I voted against the Military Commissions Act because its sloppiness would inevitably lead to the court, once again, rejecting the administration’s extreme legal position,” Obama said Thursday.
Although McCain disagreed with Obama on the high court’s ruling, he agreed with the Democrat on the fate of the prison where the detainees are held.
“I always favored closing of Guantanamo Bay and I still think we ought to do that,” McCain said.
Bush himself has expressed interest in closing Guantanamo, although the administration has had difficulty convincing governments to accept the prisoners in their home countries in the Middle East.
