US Citizens now "enemy combatant" at the whim of the President
Statement of Curt Goering
Senior Deputy Executive Director, Amnesty International USA
On Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Decision
In Padilla vs. Hanft
Today’s decision stating that the president can label a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil an “enemy combatant” and hold him indefinitely without charge is appalling, chilling and contrary to international law.
The Court’s ruling shows an extraordinary and damaging deference to the executive branch’s asserted ability to detain individuals arbitrarily and indefinitely in the broad and ambiguously defined “global war on terror.” Today’s decision has rubber-stamped the president’s specious assertion that these detentions are not bound by the rule of law.
All governments should take seriously their responsibility to protect their citizens from violent attacks. But an indefinite regime of “preventative detention” flies in the face of the fundamental principles on which the U.S. justice system was founded. Suspicion and innuendo cannot be used to deny anyone due process and a fair trial as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law.
link
3 comments:
Hogwash.
Roosevelt did the same thing to an American citizen who was recruited as a Nazi spy. Ditto Lincoln many times over for Confederate saboteurs. Ditto for Washington for British sympathizers in plainclothes.
Read a little history before posting pablum like this.
Interesting, the best link on this matter is the one that takes the side against enemy combatant rulings.
http://www.spectacle.org/yearzero/tribunal.html
I'm very interested in this particular history lesson.
So Rosevelt and Washington indefinately held US citizens for 4+ years without any form of due-process? Can you show me where I can find this?
As for Lincoln, civil war changes the whole game, no?
Mmmm, pablum...
In Roosevelt's case, they had due process alright. They were all sentenced to death pretty quickly, with, I believe 1 or 2 of the sentences commuted.
I think part of the reason we're seeing such delays now is that the Feds are trying to dot every I and cross every T and hasn't quite figured out what to do with these folks. It is a legal tangle when U.S. citizenship is involved...not to mention national security issues.
Now Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, was absolutely no friend to civil libertarians. He suspended the right to habeus corpus almost immediately and - yes - had folks put under arrest and help for the duration without due process. In fact, he had the entire state legislature of Kentucky (or was it Maryland?) put under house arrest for the duration.
After Jefferson Davis was captured in May of 1865, he was basically thrown into a dungeon - again with no due process - until they unceremoniously released him as part of a general amnesty in 1868.
As to Washington, I'm not as well read on the Revolutionary War as I am the Civil War era, but I do know in his case, anyone suspected of aiding the Brits was just plain executed after a swift military tribunal.
So, the difference here seems to be that our current detainees have little (I won't say no - they have advocates) due process which contravenes our normal judicial process. True. On the other, in the past, the fuckers were just rushed through the system and killed.
Which do you prefer?
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