Court upholds detention without trial for U.S. Citizens

Mike Whitney

Court upholds detention without trial for U.S. Citizens

Tue Sep 20, 2005 18:30

64.140.159.25

http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_1903.shtml

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10210.htm

Court upholds detention without trial for U.S. Citizens

By Reuters

09/09/05 --WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal appeals court ruled on
Friday that U.S. President George W. Bush has the power to detain
Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who has been held for more than three
years as a suspected enemy combatant without any charges being
brought against him.

"The exceedingly important question before us is whether the
president of the United States possesses the authority to detain
militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with
al Qaeda," appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote for the three-
judge panel.

"We conclude that the president does possess such authority," said
Luttig, a conservative who has been under consideration by the Bush
administration for a possible Supreme Court nomination.

Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and convert to Islam,
initially was suspected by U.S. officials of plotting with al Qaeda
to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States.

On May 8, 2002, Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare
International Airport after returning from Pakistan. Bush then
declared him an enemy combatant, and Padilla has been held in
solitary confinement at a Navy brig in South Carolina.

The appeals court reversed a decision by a federal judge in South
Carolina who ruled in February that Bush has no authority to have
Padilla held as an enemy combatant. The judge said Padilla must be
released if he is not charged with a crime.

Note : The decision by a three-judge panel was written by Judge J.
Michael Luttig, who sources have said is under consideration by
President Bush for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

© Reuters 2005.

-------------------------------------

Another view on the same concept:

Jose Padilla and the Death of Personal Liberty

"The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of
separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at
the will of theExecutive." Judge Antonin Scalia

By Mike Whitney

09/10/05 "ICH" -- --

I had to sit down when I heard the Padilla case had been settled.
I literally felt sick to my stomach, like I was gasping for air.
The case of Jose Padilla is quite simply the most important case
in the history of the American judicial system. Hanging in the
balance are all the fundamental principles of American
jurisprudence including habeas corpus, due process and "the
presumption of innocence". All of those basic concepts were
summarily revoked by the 3 judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court.
The Court ruled in favor of the Bush administration which claimed
that it had the right to indefinitely imprison an American
citizen without charging him with a crime. The resulting verdict
confers absolute authority on the President to incarcerate
American citizens without charge and without any legal means for
the accused to challenge the terms of his detention. It is the
end of "inalienable rights", the end of The Bill of Rights, and
the end of any meaningful notion of personal liberty.

I remember reading 3 or 4 years ago, in Zbigniew Brzezinski's,
"The Grand Chessboard", of a strategy to dominate the world that
would result in the loss of freedom for American citizens.
Brzezinski recognized the inherent threat that liberty posed to
the development of empire.

He stated:

"It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be
autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power,
especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before
has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But
the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion,
except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the
public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial
(that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties,
even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are
uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to
imperial mobilization." (p.35)

Brzezinski's prescient forecast has proved to be astonishingly
accurate. The determination of the neocons, the Federalist
Society, the far-right radio giants, the Olin, Scaife, Coors and
Bradley foundations, and the entire stable of right-wing, quasi-
fascist groups that operate openly within American society, have
pounded the final wooden stake into the heart of the personal
freedom. The basic legal protections that safeguard the citizen
from the arbitrary and hostile action of the state have been
rescinded. We all stand naked before the absolute power of the
President.

The government has no case against Jose Padilla, a hapless
Chicago gang-banger who allegedly visited Pakistan before he was
arrested at O'Hare airport 3 and a half years ago. He is simply
an unwitting victim of circumstance; a convenient scapegoat for
eviscerating the rule of law. The Bush administration has used
its extraordinary influence in the media to demagogue the case
and keep him locked- away without producing one shred of evidence
against him. The entire affair has been a grotesque mockery of
justice. The hard-right groups that engineered this plot know
exactly where the fault-lines in American jurisprudence lie; in
the inalienable protections of its citizens.

Padilla became the test-case for shattering the Bill of Rights
with one withering blow. It has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest
expectation.

There's no chance that the Supreme Court will retry the case and
draw more attention to the shocking details of this judicial-
coup; they already punted once before preferring to pass it along
to the lower court. Rather, the meaning of the case will be
ignored until the president needs to exercise the newly-bestowed
powers of supreme leader. That authority is now firmly rooted in
the legal precedent established by the Padilla ruling.

No Longer the Land of the Free

Americans seem unaware of the great loss we've all suffered by
the Padilla verdict. If the President is allowed to arbitrarily
decide who has "inalienable rights", than those rights become the
provisional gifts of the government rather than a reliable shield
against the abuse of state power. It means that every American
citizen is as vulnerable to the same violation of human rights as
the men currently imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. It also means
that the legal wall that shelters the citizen from the random
violence of the political establishment has been reduced to
rubble.

The Padilla ruling is the blackest day in American history. The
icons of American liberty; the Washington Monument, the Lincoln
Memorial, the Statue of Liberty; are empty shrines if they are
not underscored by the guarantee of freedom. The Vietnam
Memorial, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, the 4th of
July, the Federalist Papers, and the American flag; all
gratuitous expressions of a principle that has vanished from the
political landscape.

Every man and woman who ever wore an American uniform and died in
the service of their country, died in vain. Their sacrifice has
been rendered completely worthless by the action of the 4th
Circuit Court.

George Bush has now extinguished every meaningful part of the
American dream. The last vestige of the social contract has been
defiled and desecrated by the administration and their court.
Personal freedom is dead in America; it was impaled by the
verdict against Jose Padilla. How many thousands or, perhaps,
millions of Americans will die or endure incalculable suffering
to regain what we have lost on this tragic day?

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at:
fergiewhitney@...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10223.htm

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am6

Amendment VI - Right to speedy trial, confrontation of witnesses.
Ratified 12/15/1791.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right
to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State
and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which
district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be
informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be
confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory
process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the
Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A1Sec9

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

Attainder
attainder n. The loss of all civil rights by a person sentenced for
a serious crime. [< OFr. attaindre, to convict] Source: AHD

In the context of the Constitution, a Bill of Attainder is meant to
mean a bill that has an negative effect on a single person or group
(for example, a fine or term of imprisonment). Originally, a Bill of
Attainder sentenced an individual to death, though this detail is no
longer required to have an enactment be ruled a Bill of Attainder.
================================
British special forces caught pretending to be 'insurgents'

British soldiers have been caught posing as Arabs and shooting Iraqis in
the occupied city of Basra in southern Iraq. A group of them was caught
yesterday by Iraqi police. They were driving an Iraqi car, wearing Arab
clothing, and carrying weapons and explosives, when they were stopped by
Iraqi police.

The Iraqi police were patrolling the area looking for suspected
"terrorists" or "insurgents", and they noticed that the men were acting
suspiciously. Suddenly, without warning, the suspicious men started
shooting at people, but the new Iraqi security forces managed to capture
some of them before they could escape. Obviously, if these men had not
been caught, the mass media would now be reporting the incident as just
another attempt by evil "terrorists" to create civil war in Iraq.

There have been a number of incidents in this area and throughout Iraq in
which police and civilians have been targeted and killed by "terrorists"
or "insurgents". But this is the first time that any of those responsible
have been caught in the act, and it is now clear that at least some of
them are working directly for the occupying forces, as many Iraqis have
openly suspected all along.

The violence is always been blamed on "Islamic extremists" or "rival
ethnic factions". Yet in the history of the country, nothing like this has
ever happened before. The problems began precisely when the US and UK
seized control.

The Iraqi police arrested the men and put them in prison. Unfortunately
the police never had a chance to question the men and find out exactly
what they were doing, because within minutes the British army sent in six
tanks and an elite SAS unit to break their terrorists out of jail.

During the illegal prison break Iraqi officials were held at gunpoint,
much of the jail was demolished, and all of the other criminals and
insurgents were set free. The US and UK do not hesitate to use violence
and terror to achieve their objectives, no matter what the consequences.

The official explanation for the illegal jail break is that somebody
thought the British men might be taken away by a gang of Iraqi resistance
fighters and never seen again. This is blatantly nonsense, of course,
because the entire prison was entirely surrounded by British tanks and
troops. With the full force of the British military at hand, the
terrorists were rescued quickly and easily.

As further details emerge, the Western media is increasingly presenting
conflicting reports about the nature and sequence of events, and the
official British sources cited without question in mainstream news
coverage are indicative of a classic disinformation exercise.

When local people saw what was happening the area began to erupt with
angry anti-British protests.

PLEASE READ THE FULL REPORT:
http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=1556

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