GUANTANAMO Bay prisoners do have habeas corpus privilege, the United States Supreme Court has ruled by a 5-4 majority.

"Petitioners present a question not resolved by our earlier cases relating to the detention of aliens at Guantanamo: whether they have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus, a privilege not to be withdrawn except in conformance with the Suspension Clause, Art. I, s9, cl 2," said the ruling in Boumediene et al v Bush, President Of The United States, et al, dated 12 June.

"We hold these petitioners do have the habeas corpus privilege.

"Congress has enacted a statute, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 … that provides certain procedures for review of the detainees’ status.

"We hold that those procedures are not an adequate and effective substitute for habeas corpus. Therefore s7 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 … operates as an unconstitutional suspension of the writ.

"We do not address whether the President has authority to detain these petitioners nor do we hold that the writ must issue. These and other questions regarding the legality of the detention are to be resolved in the first instance by the District Court," the judgment said.

The judgment quoted Alexander Hamilton "[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have (sic) been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.

"The observations of the judicious Blackstone … are well worthy of recital: ‘To bereave a man of life … or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.’

"And as a remedy for this fatal evil (Blackstone) is everywhere peculiarly emphatical in his encomiums on the Habeas Corpus Act, which in one place he calls ‘the bulwark of the British Constitution.’"