Captured in the war on terror. Held at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Accountable only to the U.S. government. Can legally appeal to … no one?

Although they’ve conveniently been flown under the radar of the American public for more than two years, there are still almost 600 men detained in Guantanamo. Captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan during U.S. operations against the Taliban, the detainees have yet to face any sort of trial, whether in front of a military tribunal or the U.S. judicial system.

The federal appeals court ruled last year that federal courts lack jurisdiction to consider habeus corpus petitions (by which prisoners can question the legality of their confinement) from the detainees.

But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on behalf of 16 detainees — two Australians, two Britons and 12 Kuwaitis — who claim they were innocent noncombatants and want to contest their detention through writs of habeus corpus. The Bush administration, represented by Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson (who lost his wife in the Sept. 11 attacks), maintains the camp is not a part of the United States — and nonenemy combatants detained outside the United States have no rights to habeus corpus.

The precedent upon which Olson is basing his argument is the 1950 Supreme Court decision Johnson v. Eisentrager, which determined that noncitizen enemy combatants held outside the United States have no right to habeus corpus, based on rejected petitions from 21 German civilians found spying for Japan in wartime China, according to the New York Times article.

Lawyers for the detainees are now arguing Guantanamo is part of the United States., and thus the case is not applicable under the 1950 decision. Justice Ginsburg maintains it’s part of the United States, saying that the treaty gives “complete jurisdiction and control” of the base to the U.S. Chief Justice Rehnquist responded that the treaty ” also says Cuba retains sovereignty.”

If lawyers are looking for reasons to argue that Guantanamo is or isn’t a part of the United States, they probably don’t need to look much farther than the treaty. We’re not experts in treaty law, but it is interesting to see some of the bare facts. But these men have been detained for more than two years; the United States maintaining they are immune from the Geneva Convention (but nonetheless violating most of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) is abominable.

If the United States is to maintain any shred of credibility (and have a base upon which to pull its own noncombatants out of foreign countries — missionaries to China, anyone?), these men, captured by the U.S. military and held at a U.S. naval base, must have the right to appeal.