Appeal by bin Laden aide rejected

Supreme Court will not hear tribunal use case

WASHINGTON — The appeal of one of Obama bin Laden’s top aides ended Tuesday, as the Supreme Court declined to review whether his conviction by a military tribunal exceeded that body’s authority.

Without comment, the justices turned down an appeal by Ali

Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul, a propagandist for al-qaida and former media secretary for bin Laden. He was convicted of conspiracy by a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Lawyers for Bahlul claimed that the Yemeni man’s conviction violated a constitutional requirement that most criminal prosecutions take place in federal courts. The charge against Bahlul was a domestic one, not a violation of international law.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has debated the powers of the military tribunal system ever since the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that those held at Guantanamo Bay have some rights in federal courts to challenge their detention.

Bahlul, who has been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, was originally convicted of conspiracy to commit war crimes, solicitation of others to commit crimes and providing material support for terrorism.

Only the conspiracy charge remained, however, and the circuit court split in upholding that conviction.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote for several other judges to say that Congress may designate military commissions to try domestic offenses typically heard by civilian courts.

“The Constitution does not give foreign nations (acting through the international law of war or otherwise) a de facto veto over Congress’s determination of which war crimes may be tried by U.S. military commissions,” Kavanaugh wrote in an opinion joined by Judges Janice Rogers Brown and Thomas Griffith.

Other judges, endorsing more limited legal reasoning, joined to make a six-member majority to uphold the conviction.

In a 67-page dissent, three judges said there are “constitutionally prescribed boundaries” between military and civilian courts and that the prosecution could have charged Bahlul with war crimes or charged him in federal court.

The Supreme Court gave no reason for not accepting Bahlul v. United States, and new Justice Neil Gorsuch took no part.

In other business, the Supreme Court on Tuesday:

■ Agreeed to hear a decades-long dispute between Florida and Georgia over water rights.

■ Left in place the conviction of ex-massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship for misdemeanor conspiracy to violate federal safety standards at a West Virginia mine where 29 miners died in 2010.