Petitioning for a writ of habeas are Mohammad Munaf (left) and
Shawqi Ahmad Omar (below left), both U.S. citizens who also hold citizenship in a 2d country, and both of whom now are detained in Iraq. The U.S. brief filed in advance of oral argument cites as the "threshold jurisdictional question" in the case whetherInteresting question, particularly given that the 1949 per curiam judgment in Hirota. There, as I discussed a while back, out of 9 Justices agreed denied habeas petitions challenging convictions issued by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Tokyo-based counterpart to the Nuremberg trials. The Court in Hirota deemed the IMTFE a "military tribunal" established by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur "as the agent of the Allied Powers," so that "the courts of the United States have no power or authority to review, to affirm, set aside, or annul the judgments and sentences imposed." (p. 17)United States courts lack jurisdiction to review the detention of individuals held broad pursuant to international authority, including individuals held by United States forces acting as part of a multinational force.
But here's what curious: in Munaf the U.S. government contends that U.S. troops that're detaining petitioners do not hold them "'in custody under or by color of the authority of the United States,'" as subsection (c)(1) of the federal habeas statute requires, for the reason that those troops are detaining petitioners "pursuant to international authority"; that is, the coalition known as Multi-National Force (MNF). (pp. 17-18)
The claim suggests a break in the U.S. chain of command -- a cession of U.S. sovereignty -- that's at odds both with the staunchly sovereigntist stance of this administration and with extrajudicial statements that administration officials have made. To cite just 2 examples, on June 5, 2004, Colin Powell, then the United States' Secretary of State, wrote in a letter to Lauro L. Baja, Jr., then President of U.N. Security Council:
Likewise, in a July 1, 2004, U.S. Department of Defense briefing, Brigadier General David Rodriguez, Deputy Director for Operations, J-3, Joint Staff, said with regard to the MNF:[T]he MNF must continue to function under a framework that affords the force and its personnel the status that they need to accomplish their mission, and in which the contributing states have responsibility for exercising jurisdiction over their personnel .... The existing framework governing these matters is sufficient for these purposes.
But in every case, all our allies have a chain of command that goes up to their national leaders, just like we do.Though the clash in claims may not estop the government as a matter of law, am curious to see, should it be noted in oral argument, whether the government reconciles the clash as a matter of persuasive advocacy.
(cross-posted at Slate' s brand-new Convictions blog, as explained below.)
