habeas corpus rigor mortis
Nov. 28th, 2002 06:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistI can always count on a "headline" provided by America Online as I log on to give me a fit, whether through a liberal use of exclamation signs in a story about michael jackson, or through the implied incredulous disapproving tsk-tsk tone of "ah mah gawd! they want LAWYERS!!! what next??!!?? a silver marzipan on a golden platter? (that's a paraphrased Russian colloquialism used to mean that someone's requests are unreasonable and ridiculous)" like here:
WAR DETAINEES SEEK COURT ACCESS
WASHINGTON (Dec. 2) - Detainees in the war on terrorism are fighting for access to American courts, contending they should not be held at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without seeing a lawyer and without being charged with a crime.
The Bush administration was arguing in a federal appeals court here Monday that 12 Kuwaitis, two Australians and two British Muslims captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks are ``unlawful combatants.''
Siding with Justice Department lawyers, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled four months ago that the Guantanamo detainees have no right to court hearings, meaning the military can hold them indefinitely without filing charges.
The prisoners are not in the United States and thus do not fall under the jurisdiction of federal courts, the judge said.
Guantanamo has nearly 600 detainees.
The Justice Department and Kollar-Kotelly are relying on a 1950 Supreme Court ruling involving German nationals in World War II convicted before a military commission and held in a prison in Germany.
Like the Germans, the Guantanamo detainees ``are `actual enemies, active in the hostile service of an enemy power''' and they lack standing in U.S. courts, the Justice Department said in recent court papers.
The two cases are completely different, lawyers for the detainees and their families responded.
``It is one thing to acknowledge ... that enemy aliens in the active service of a hostile state cannot seek post-conviction relief in the federal courts,'' they said in a court filing. ``But it is quite another to suggest ... that any alien ... may be deprived of their liberty indefinitely by the United States military, with no legal process, simply by the expedient of bringing them to Guantanamo Bay.''
``Congress has never so much as intimated, let alone made a `plain statement,' that aliens detained outside the 50 states have no right to seek the writ of habeas corpus,'' the filing said. The appeals court should ``recognize Guantanamo Bay for what it is: a fully American enclave with `the basic attributes of full territorial sovereignty.'''
The U.S. military announced late last year that the 45-square-mile base on the southeastern tip of Cuba, the oldest U.S. overseas outpost, was the destination for Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners.
The United States leased the land for the base from Cuba in 1903 for 2,000 gold coins a year, now valued at $4,085. Washington pays that amount every year, but Fidel Castro's government refuses to cash the checks.
The base is surrounded by 17.4 miles of fence line and a corresponding Cuban fence line and minefield.
As for the detainees in the appeals court case:
The 12 Kuwaitis were in Afghanistan doing charity work and weren't there to fight, their families have said.
British Muslims Asif Iqbal, who is in his early 20s, and Shafiq Rasul, who is in his mid-20s, flew to Pakistan and then to Afghanistan just days before the Sept. 11 attacks.
There is little doubt that Australian David Hicks, 26, had joined the Taliban when he was captured by U.S.-backed Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan, Australian Prime Minister John Howard has said. Hicks' family denies that he trained with al-Qaida. Australian newspapers have published photos of Hicks as a freckled 10-year-old schoolboy alongside a picture of him as a bazooka-toting soldier taken during a stint in Kosovo, where he fought with Muslims in the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Australian Mamdouh Habib, 47, was captured by U.S. forces in Pakistan on suspicion of links to al-Qaida. Habib's wife denies any al-Qaida connection. The couple have four children.
Habib's Sydney-based attorney, Stephen Hopper, told Australian television that Habib, who also holds Egyptian citizenship, visited New York in 1991 and met a man who later was convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Subsequently, another man convicted in the 1993 bombing called Habib in Australia a couple of times trying to get him to raise money for his defense, Hopper said.
The other Guantanamo prisoners are from more than 40 countries and include about 60 Pakistanis and some 100 Saudi Arabians. A handful of Afghan and Pakistani detainees have been sent home from Guantanamo after being cleared of terrorist suspicions.
12/02/02 01:19 EST
right, war detaininees, in the murkily declared war (de facto, de jure, propaganda, accountability, policy, warmongering, all collapsed into one big ball of stink) with German war prisoners as precedent...well, during WWII, the US also put the Japanese in internment camps. hey, anyone seen the movie “The Siege”???
WAR DETAINEES SEEK COURT ACCESS
WASHINGTON (Dec. 2) - Detainees in the war on terrorism are fighting for access to American courts, contending they should not be held at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without seeing a lawyer and without being charged with a crime.
The Bush administration was arguing in a federal appeals court here Monday that 12 Kuwaitis, two Australians and two British Muslims captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks are ``unlawful combatants.''
Siding with Justice Department lawyers, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled four months ago that the Guantanamo detainees have no right to court hearings, meaning the military can hold them indefinitely without filing charges.
The prisoners are not in the United States and thus do not fall under the jurisdiction of federal courts, the judge said.
Guantanamo has nearly 600 detainees.
The Justice Department and Kollar-Kotelly are relying on a 1950 Supreme Court ruling involving German nationals in World War II convicted before a military commission and held in a prison in Germany.
Like the Germans, the Guantanamo detainees ``are `actual enemies, active in the hostile service of an enemy power''' and they lack standing in U.S. courts, the Justice Department said in recent court papers.
The two cases are completely different, lawyers for the detainees and their families responded.
``It is one thing to acknowledge ... that enemy aliens in the active service of a hostile state cannot seek post-conviction relief in the federal courts,'' they said in a court filing. ``But it is quite another to suggest ... that any alien ... may be deprived of their liberty indefinitely by the United States military, with no legal process, simply by the expedient of bringing them to Guantanamo Bay.''
``Congress has never so much as intimated, let alone made a `plain statement,' that aliens detained outside the 50 states have no right to seek the writ of habeas corpus,'' the filing said. The appeals court should ``recognize Guantanamo Bay for what it is: a fully American enclave with `the basic attributes of full territorial sovereignty.'''
The U.S. military announced late last year that the 45-square-mile base on the southeastern tip of Cuba, the oldest U.S. overseas outpost, was the destination for Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners.
The United States leased the land for the base from Cuba in 1903 for 2,000 gold coins a year, now valued at $4,085. Washington pays that amount every year, but Fidel Castro's government refuses to cash the checks.
The base is surrounded by 17.4 miles of fence line and a corresponding Cuban fence line and minefield.
As for the detainees in the appeals court case:
The 12 Kuwaitis were in Afghanistan doing charity work and weren't there to fight, their families have said.
British Muslims Asif Iqbal, who is in his early 20s, and Shafiq Rasul, who is in his mid-20s, flew to Pakistan and then to Afghanistan just days before the Sept. 11 attacks.
There is little doubt that Australian David Hicks, 26, had joined the Taliban when he was captured by U.S.-backed Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan, Australian Prime Minister John Howard has said. Hicks' family denies that he trained with al-Qaida. Australian newspapers have published photos of Hicks as a freckled 10-year-old schoolboy alongside a picture of him as a bazooka-toting soldier taken during a stint in Kosovo, where he fought with Muslims in the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Australian Mamdouh Habib, 47, was captured by U.S. forces in Pakistan on suspicion of links to al-Qaida. Habib's wife denies any al-Qaida connection. The couple have four children.
Habib's Sydney-based attorney, Stephen Hopper, told Australian television that Habib, who also holds Egyptian citizenship, visited New York in 1991 and met a man who later was convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Subsequently, another man convicted in the 1993 bombing called Habib in Australia a couple of times trying to get him to raise money for his defense, Hopper said.
The other Guantanamo prisoners are from more than 40 countries and include about 60 Pakistanis and some 100 Saudi Arabians. A handful of Afghan and Pakistani detainees have been sent home from Guantanamo after being cleared of terrorist suspicions.
12/02/02 01:19 EST
right, war detaininees, in the murkily declared war (de facto, de jure, propaganda, accountability, policy, warmongering, all collapsed into one big ball of stink) with German war prisoners as precedent...well, during WWII, the US also put the Japanese in internment camps. hey, anyone seen the movie “The Siege”???
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no subject
Date: 2002-12-02 06:41 am (UTC)no subject
and i am sure if any country raises a big stink about it, they will be promptly guaranteed a place on the axis of evil. i am surprised ACLU has not been declared an enemy of the state yet.
Re:
Date: 2002-12-02 09:07 am (UTC)