Those damn judges are making it awfully hard for Bush to ignore the Constitution. He wanted to hold civilians living in the United States as enemy combatants. Today, a federal appeals court said that was an absolute no-no.
Judges Say U.S. Can’t Hold Man as ‘Combatant’
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: June 12, 2007
The federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled yesterday that the president may not declare civilians in this country to be "enemy combatants" and have the military hold them indefinitely. The ruling was a stinging rejection of one of the Bush administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism.
The ruling came in the case of Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., who is the only person on the American mainland known to be held as an enemy combatant. The court said the administration may charge Mr. Marri with a crime, deport him or hold him as a material witness in connection with a grand jury investigation.
Unsurprisingly, the Justice Department is claiming that the President has the right to sidestep the law in detaining Mr. al-Marri because the President really really wants to.
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"The president has made clear," the [Justice Department] statement continued, "that he intends to use all available tools at his disposal to protect Americans from further Al Qaeda attack, including the capture and detention of Al Qaeda agents who enter our borders."
The Judges comment that Mr. al-Marri's actions or lack of actions are beside the point. The man has to be charged and tried within the United States criminal justice system. Not disappeared and threated with torture.
Mr. al-Marri lived in Peoria (literally, in Peoria) Illinois. He has a family and was studying at Bradley University. He was arrested in 2003 for credit card fraud and lying to Federal agents . . . and then, without explanation, was transfered to a Navy brig. For 16 months he had no outside contact with family or lawyers. He was threatened with extradition and torture.
Human Rights Watch comments that this is another rebuke, in string of them, from conservative judges to Bush.
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"Last Monday, two military judges handpicked to preside over the Guantánamo Bay trials rejected the claim that a presidential order alone was sufficient to give the courts jurisdiction over the detainees," said Jennifer Daskal, advocacy director of the United States Program of Human Rights Watch. "And today, one of the nation’s most conservative courts squarely rejected the president’s unprecedented assertion that he, alone, could hand out the label of ‘enemy combatant’ without any sort of independent court review."