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Fate of detainees now with appeals court

The saga of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay — in captivity for years — is focusing on military tribunals that found them to be enemy combatants, which left them without any of the rights accorded prisoners of war.

Their cases are to take a detour into a federal appeals court Tuesday, a move arranged by a Republican-controlled Congress at the urging of the Bush administration.

The detainees' attorneys want the appeals court to allow a broad inquiry questioning the accuracy of the evidence the tribunals gathered about the detainees, most of it classified.

The Justice Department seeks a limited review, saying that the findings of the military tribunals are "entitled to the highest level of deference."

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia should not engage in fact-finding, argues the Justice Department.

Lawyers for the prisoners disagree.

All the detainees can show compelling evidence of their innocence and yet most are held in solitary confinement "where they are literally going insane," their lawyers said in court papers.

The detainees' lawyers are restricted in the action they can take in U.S. courts.

A year ago, the Congress, controlled at the time by Republicans, passed a law at the urging of the Bush administration that stripped the prisoners of the right to challenge their indefinite detention.

The judges in the case are Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg, a Reagan appointee; Karen Lecraft Henderson, an appointee of
President Bush's father; and Judith Rogers, a Clinton appointee.