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Edited on Wed Jun-23-04 06:26 PM by bigtree
Anywhere? Under any law? How many? Were they a threat to our national security as the republicans are now squealing in defense of their torture and detainment? Up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested "by mistake," according to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross report. _________________________________ . . . many Iraqis over the past year have claimed they were arrested by American forces because of misunderstandings, bogus claims by personal enemies, mistaken identity or simply for having been at the wrong place at the wrong time. One former detainee who claims he was abused, Haider Sabbar Abed, said he was arrested in July when the driver of the car in which he was traveling was unable to produce proper papers at a U.S. checkpoint. He was not released until April 15. In one operation, U.S. special operations troops detained nearly the entire male population of a desert village, Habbariyah, one as old as 81 and one 13-year-old, apparently to prevent terrorists from slipping across the border from Saudi Arabia. The 79 men were held for weeks. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20040510-1507-redcross-prisonerabuse.html_____________________________________ Rumsfeld's Nov. 27, 2002, memo approved several methods which apparently would violate Geneva Convention rules, including: Putting detainees in "stress positions," such as standing, for up to four hours. -Removing prisoners' clothes. -Intimidating detainees with dogs. -Interrogating prisoners for 20 hours at a time. -Forcing prisoners to wear hoods during interrogations and transportation. -Shaving detainees' heads and beards. -Using "mild, non-injurious physical contact," such as poking. -Prisoners at Abu Ghraib were interrogated for as long as 20 hours at a time, kept hooded and naked, intimidated with dogs and forcibly shaved. Bush and other administration officials have said other treatment at the Iraqi prison, such as forcing prisoners to perform sex acts, beating them and piling them in a naked human pyramid, were unquestionably illegal. http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040623_1880.html______________________________ Calling him "a man of great integrity, a man of great judgment and a man who knows the law," President George W. Bush announced his decision to nominate John Ashcroft to serve as Attorney General. http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/ashcroftbio.html". . . enforcing the law is one of my principles. That's one of the things I believe in. That's why I've devote my life to government. That's one of the things that -- you know, I think what separates a free society from any other culture is the rule of law. And if I decide that I can set the rule of law aside, so can everyone else and you don't have a free society. You have anarchy." (John Ashcroft Discusses His New Job as Attorney General.) http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0102/07/lkl.00.html________________________________________ ...the ACLU and it New York affiliate argue that American citizen Jose Padilla's detention violates the right to due process of law guaranteed in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution and that the government cannot evade this requirement by designating Padilla as an "enemy combatant." The brief also cites a 1971 Congressional statute that provides, " citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress."
http://www.nyclu.org/padilla_amicus092602.html
Under the U.S. Constitution, unlawful or arbitrary detentions are considered violations of the right to due process contained in the fifth and fourteenth amendments, which forbid the government from depriving any person of "life, liberty or property without due process of law." As the Supreme Court has stated, "freedom from imprisonment-from government custody, detention, or other forms of physical restraint-lies at the heart of the liberty that Clause protects. "http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/us911/USA0802-05.htm#P723_187176
The due process clause applies "to all `persons' within the United States," including aliens, whether their presence is lawful or not.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/us911/USA0802-05.htm#P724_187769
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Two major court decisions on the rights—or lack of rights—of suspected terrorists, Talibans, and others detained in the war against terrorism came down on March 11. The first held that the 650 foreign nationals seized by U.S. forces abroad and detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have no legal rights enforceable in U.S. courts. The second decision, by contrast, sharply rebuffed the Bush administration position that even a U.S. citizen arrested in this country can be held incommunicado indefinitely, with no right ever to see a lawyer, a judge, or anyone else, if the military labels this person an enemy combatant.
Both rulings may be legally correct. But they also illustrate that unless Congress requires due process for such detainees, many and perhaps all of those who are wrongly classified as enemy combatants will be lost in a Kafkaesque maze, with no help from the courts in most cases and inadequate help in others.
This at a time of mounting allegations that some detainees who turned out to be innocent have been subjected to months of brutal conditions designed to soften them up for interrogation.
For example, two former Afghan prisoners at the U.S. air base at Bagram, Afghanistan, named Abdul Jabar and Hakkim Shah, told The New York Times that between interrogations they were kept standing in cold cells for two weeks, day and night, naked (in Shah's case), hooded, arms chained to the ceiling, feet shackled, and sleepless, with guards kicking them or shouting to keep them awake. The deaths of two other Bagram detainees are under investigation as homicides, caused in one case by what a U.S. military pathologist called "blunt-force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease." The man was 22.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/nj/taylor2003-03-18.htm
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Yunis, along with his brothers, Abbass, and Khalid, are three of the approximately 5,000 detainees the Coalition Provisional Authority admits to holding, though many suspect the real number is no less than twice that. Virtually all are being held indefinitely and without charges — they are “suspected terrorists.” All the families assembled at Abu Ghraib say their relatives are innocent — picked up largely in indiscriminate raids conducted on bad information. There is little to back up their claims of innocence, but given the number of rumors of people showing up at the prison to find relatives and being arrested themselves, it seems hard to believe anyone would show up if they truly believed their relatives were guilty — some of those claiming innocence admit they are frightened. It is common for the Americans to raid all of the houses belonging to an extended family or to arrest all the brothers from a single family.
Many of the families have traveled to multiple prisons across the country, searching for news. The trip from the detainment facility in Tikrit in the north to Camp Bucca in Umm Qasr in the south takes 11 hours by car, and prisoners are moved often. Transliterated names, often spelled incorrectly, can also make it hard to track someone down. In trying to track down Yunis and his brothers, McKewan made visits to various Coalition and military offices but eventually located Khalid’s number at the Al-Adamiyah mayor’s office. The numbers for Yunis and Abbass were not on the list.
“The Americans have no system — he might be in Abu Ghraib, he might be in Umm Qasr,” says Saeed Al-Hammashe, the head of the Baghdad Lawyer’s Association and the deputy president of the Higher National Committee on Human Rights, a local group that formed in April and was highly endorsed by Sergio DiMello, the late United Nations special envoy to Iraq.
Al-Hammashe says he has taken on 20 cases of men detained by the Americans, and that he has been unsuccessful in freeing any of them or even receiving disclosure papers regarding the reasons they were arrested.
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=2080
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Scores of immigrants detained after the September 11 terror attacks were jailed for weeks before they were charged with immigration violations, according to documents released by the Justice Department, the Washington Post reported.
In one example, according to the Post, two Pakistani immigrants were arrested on October 2, but were not charged with overstaying their visas until 49 days later, the records show. In another case, an Israeli national of unidentified ethnicity was held for 66 days before being charged with illegally entering the country.
The newly released documents, filed in federal court Friday by the Justice Department in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the agency, provide the clearest picture yet of the controversial and secretive dragnet launched by the United States government in the wake of the terror attacks.
The data show that most of the approximately 725 people detained on immigration violations since September 11 were charged within several days of their arrest. But a significant number waited in jail for a week or more before the Immigration and Naturalization Service served them with charging documents, according to a heavily edited list provided to plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
http://archive.aclu.org/news/2002/w011502a.html
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"On any given day, week or month, there are going to be arrests somewhere in this great, large world of ours," Rumsfeld told Pentagon reporters. More arrests are inevitable "with all the countries that are cooperating on sharing intelligence (and) with all the countries that are at a heightened state of alert and attentiveness to who's moving in and out of their country."
"We've got to figure out how to do it right and do it well," he said. "We've been trying to do it in a measured, careful, balanced way. Thus far we've succeeded, I think."
-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2002/n06182002_200206183.html
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The latest lie
"Obviously, in terms of the Iraqi conflict, where Iraq is a high contracting party to the Geneva Convention, the United States is bound by those conventions, both Article 3 relating to prisoners of war and Article 4 relating to civilian population.
And that's the basis for my indicating the president has issued no order or directive directing conduct that would violate the torture statute or any of these other laws, which guide our behavior, should guide our behavior and do guide and have guided our behavior."
" You know, the president -- as a matter of fact I had it here -- the president ordered the Department of Defense to treat Al Qaida and Taliban detainees humanely and, to the extent consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of the Geneva Conventions."
(Ashcroft Comments on Anti-Terror Policy, June 8, 2004) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25211-2004Jun8.html
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When should a great nation such as ours be expected to actually exercise some of the justice, due process, and freedoms that this administration claims to be defending with its "war on terrorism"? How long will they be able to claim immunity from international law in its actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially since it now insists that the U.S. no longer has authority over either country?
Doesn't Bush and his posse eventually have to prove the guilt of those it has detained?
There is an unprecedented brinkmanship in regard to the administration's accountability, which defines the limits of its powers, being played out by Bush , as the upcoming elections will almost certainly be the final arbiter. The republican Congress has refused to reign him in and will have to be replaced, if Bush isn't, in order to hold his administration responsible and accountable.
Come November.
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