Appeals court tosses Gitmo suit _ again

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday for a second time rejected a lawsuit by Guantanamo Bay detainees who say they were tortured and denied religious rights.

Four British men say they were beaten, shackled in painful stress positions and threatened by dogs during their time at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. They also say they were harassed while practicing their religion, including forced shaving of their beards, banning or interrupting their prayers, denying them copies of the Koran and prayer mats and throwing a copy of the Koran in a toilet.

The defendants in the case included top Bush administration military officials such as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and retired Gen. Richard Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The former detainees contend that the military officials violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which provides that the “government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion.”

The Court of Appeals in Washington ruled against them early last year, saying because the men were foreigners held outside the United States, they do not fall within the definition of a “person” protected by the act.

But later in the year, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo detainees have some rights under the Constitution. So the Supreme Court instructed the appeals court to reconsider the lawsuit in light of their decision.

The appeals court ruled Friday that it reached the same conclusion, saying the Supreme Court decision did not change their reasoning. The judges noted that the four men who filed the suit — Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal Al-Harith — were released in 2004, more than four years before the Supreme Court ruling.

“We do not require government employees to anticipate future developments in constitutional law,” the ruling said.

“At the time of their detention, neither the Supreme Court nor this court had ever held that aliens captured on foreign soil and detained beyond sovereign U.S. territory had any constitutional rights,” the court said.

The Obama administration filed a brief in the case supporting the case’s dismissal, arguing that holding military officials liable for their treatment of prisoners could cause them to make future decisions based on fear of litigation rather than appropriate military policy.