--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., "Andrew T. Patton" <andrew@A...> wrote:

"You and the US Courts would be in disagreement here. Several lawsuits
have been made with regards to the prisoners from Afghanistan. The US
Courts have repeatedly said that they do not have jurisdictions as
Guantanamo Bay is in Cuba not the US.

--------

I don't think there is any variance with my view and what the courts
think. The courts are saying only that they have no jurisdiction in
this area where US sovereinty operated.

There are lots of places under US sovereignty that are not or were not
in the US where the US courts operate or operated:

a. The US Sector of W. Berlin (the US had prisoners there, too.
The US had a District Court that oeprated in occuplied Berlin, so
whatever law governs the US judiciary in overseas areas must discern
between areas under US sovereignty based upon the legal nature of the
jurisdiction involved. Discussin which laws of the US apply in what
way is an internal matter about the applicabliity of domestic laws to
overseas areas (i.e., only an internal affair as to in what way the
sovereignty that the US has will be applied). The internal discussion
about how the US treated its prisoners in Berlin didn't affect or
diminish the US exercise of sovereignty. The fact that one
jurisdiction was conquered and the other was leased (even if by
compulsion), are immaterial characteristics independent of the nature
of the sovereignty being exercized.

b. Ryukyus Islands during the US occupation. The situation was
the same as in Berlin, vis-a-vis prisoners kept there after the war,
except that the US had a military government there running military
courts.

c. Guam. When US government employees and military personnel are
detailed from CONUS (Continental US) to work there, they are on tours
of duty that are termed "overseas non-foreign". They get "overseas"
cost of living allowances while in Guam, but none of the other
financial attributes that go with foreign assignments. If the same
person were to have been transferred from Guam to U.S. occupied
Berlin, the person would have moved from one US jurisdiction to
another, but the US laws applicable to each tour of duty would be
different. One doesn't have to be a prisoner to have the sovereign
applying different laws.

No matter what the legal nature of the jurisdiction may be with
respect to the operation of courts or their not operating somewhere,
US sovereignty is still being applied.

To your other statement about Cuba, and the way the US got hold of
Guantanamo, the US may well have said that Cuba could become the
sovereign if the US were to abandon it. It would have been no great
concession - I can't imagine the US saying anything else; after all,
Cuba is the nearest country to Guantanamo. "Abandon" means the US
woudn't fight for it anymore. But as sovereign, the US COULD, if it
wanted to pull out and not abandon the base, do something else with it
if it wanted to - like sublease it to China perhaps. China would then
be the successor to the US in both the ports of the former Canal Zone
and Cuba.

Back to my initial point about sovereignty changing as a result of a
lease, as sovereign over that leased territory in Cuba, the US could
sublease it to China if the US felt it was politically worth fighting
against Cuba to keep the sublease intact. I only thought of a lease to
the UK as the first hypothetical that came to mind. But tonight, I
realized that China, interested in Panama as it is, might be an
alternate country to which the US could turn, IF the UK said "no", and
IF the USA absolutely did not want to stay in Guantanamo and also
absolutely did not want the Cuban government to have it back.

Regards,

LN