Democratic Senator Chris Dodd introduced legislation late last week that would make amendments to the Military Commissions Act. One such amendment would restore the right of habeas corpus to military detainees. The act, signed into law last month by President Bush, strips detainees of the right to have writs of habeas corpus considered by US courts. This clear violation of human rights was achieved by redefining the detainees as �unlawful enemy combatants�.

Senator Dodd’s bill, the Effective Terrorists Prosecution Act, not only restores these basic protections, but narrows the class of detainees identified as enemy combatants to those who directly participate in hostilities against the US who are not lawful combatants. Other key provisions are the exclusion of evidence acquired by coercion, and the exclusion of hearsay evidence. Speaking of the changes his bill would have on the Military Commissions Act, Senator Dodd simply stated; “The bill goes back and undoes what was done”. Dodd was one of the top critics of the military tribunal bill Republicans hashed out with the White House.

Dodd’s bill would also provide for expedited review of the Military Commissions Act to determine the constitutionality of its provisions. Earlier this month, lawyers representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay petitioned the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to declare the suspension of habeas rights unconstitutional. Incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin, said he too was concerned with the act. “I think that there’s been some significant abuses which have not made us more secure, but have made us less secure and have also perhaps cost us some real allies, as well as not producing particularly useful information.� Levin concluded, �So I think the system needs a thorough review, and as the military would say, a thorough scrubbing.”

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