USA TODAY: Lawmakers to work on shutting down Guantanamo facility
Senate amendment would grant legal rights to detainees
By Richard Willing
WASHINGTON — Members of Congress plan to push measures to stop funding for the Guantanamo Bay detention center and grant new legal rights to detainees when Congress returns this week.
"As long as Guantanamo stays open, it undermines our defining principles as a nation of equal justice under law," said Rep Jim Moran, D-Va., author of a funding proposal that would give the Bush administration six months to close the Cuban facility....
Moran says he will propose that funding for Guantanamo, pegged at $150 million a year, be phased out and that most of the estimated 375 detainees be brought to the USA and tried in civilian or military courts. In a bow to (Defense Secretary) Gates, Moran will propose that the government be permitted to hold a small number of the "worst of the worst" detainees without bringing charges....
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In the Senate, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., plans to attach to a defense spending bill an amendment that would grant detainees the right to challenge their detentions through habeas corpus petitions, spokesman David Carle said. A law passed by Congress last year eliminated habeas corpus rights for detainees. The defense bill is to be taken up by the full Senate on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Two other Democratic senators, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Dianne Feinstein of California, have filed bills that would close Guantanamo, Harkin spokeswoman Jennifer Mullin said....
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070709/a_gitmo09.art.htm