[JURIST] A United Nations Commission on Human Rights [official website] Special Rapporteur said Wednesday that Tuesday's US DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruling [JURIST report] denying relief on jurisdictional grounds to Afghan war detainees held outside the US at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had "far reaching" implications and could be a "dangerous precedent." Dato' Param Cumaraswamy, the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, said the decision

appears to imply that a government of a sovereign State could lease a piece of land from a neighboring State, set up a detention camp, fully operate and control it, arrest suspects of terrorism from other jurisdictions, send them to this camp, deny them their legal rights -- including principles of due process generally granted to its own citizens -- on grounds that the camp is physically outside its jurisdiction. By such conduct, the Government of the United States, in this case, will be seen as systematically evading application of domestic and international law so as to deny these suspects their legal rights. Detention without trial offends the first principle of the rule of law.