February 13, 2004
Lock 'em up and throw away the key.
US military authorities say that many of the 650 'enemy combatants' being held at Guantanamo could be imprisoned there indefinitely. Not for years, mind you, but indefinitely.
Our favorite part of the NY Times article is where, citing the usual rationale that the US is at war, the usual anonymous Defense Department official says that:
[W]hile some critics worried about the rights of the detainees, the Pentagon was more concerned with "the rights of the soldiers having these people not going back to the battlefield" and the rights of the soldiers' families not to have their relatives face the same men in combat.
How about the right to a trial by jury? Or the right to confront one's accusers? Or about the right to know what one is being charged with?
Oh, those are just constitutional rights, aren't they? Sorry we brought it up ...
Posted by Magpie at February 13, 2004 02:21 AM | TrackBackYes, this administration is so obsessed with security that it lost sight of the rights of the individual beneath all that, either friend or foe.
Some legal background: Johnson v. Eisentrager is the controlling law as far as the administration is concerned. Essentially that case held (in respect to captured Germans at the end of WWII) that enemy aliens had no access to US courts in times of war.
Gherebi v. Bush et al. (2003) challenges Eisentrager and the 9th Circuit upheld that claim in ref to the Gitmo detainees. It is still working its way through the system.
Posted by: michael the wanderer on February 13, 2004 09:59 PM