Rights groups rap Bush on detainees

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http://washingtontimes.com/upi/20050626-082613-9563r.htm

United Press International

Rights groups rap Bush on detainees
Jun. 26, 2005 at 8:42PM

Two leading civil rights groups accuse the Bush administration of misusing the American system of due process following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union plan to issue a report Monday calling on Congress to establish tougher civil liberties safeguards, the New York Times reported Sunday.

The report concluded that 70 suspects -- one-fourth of them American citizens, and all but one Muslim men -- were jailed, in many cases, for weeks or months at a time in American facilities without being charged with a crime, the Times said. Just seven of the men ended up being charged with supporting terrorism, and four have been convicted so far, the new report found.
The report concluded that many of the suspects who were held as material witnesses were "thrust into a Kafkaesque world of indefinite detention without charges, secret evidence, and baseless accusations."

The Times said aides to U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, said he would introduce legislation to retrain the government's ability to detain material witnesses indefinitely.

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1. Groups: U.S. misusing law in terror fight

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http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/11992931.htm

Groups: U.S. misusing law in terror fight

MARK SHERMAN

Associated Press


WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has misused a federal law to detain at least 70 terrorism suspects since the Sept. 11 attacks, two advocacy groups contend.

Administration officials defend the detentions by pointing out that judges approved material witness warrants.

The material witness law, enacted in 1984, allows the arrest and detention of witnesses who might flee before testifying in criminal cases.

Only 28 of the suspects were eventually charged with a crime, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch, and most of those charges were not related to terrorism.

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