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Obama's Detention Plans Face Scrutiny | ||||||
2009-05-23 | ||||||
Some detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are deemed too dangerous to release and may not be able to put on trial, creating a quandary that President Barack Obama said Thursday poses "the toughest issue we will face." There are still many unknowns in the administration's plans. How many prisoners will fall into the thorniest category requiring indefinite detention is still unclear while detainee cases are being reviewed by government lawyers. A White House task force reviewing detention policy is set to make recommendations in late July. The administration has floated with Congress a possible plan that would seek legislation allowing the government to hold suspected terrorists without trial indefinitely on U.S. soil. A National Security Court would oversee the cases. Administration lawyers view the congressional and court oversight of the plans as key to their argument that their approach differs significantly from the Bush administration, which tried to claim broad presidential powers to strip terror suspects of legal rights. There's a tradition of indefinite detentions by the military in war time. However, the government's argument that the campaign against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups may be a war without end creates complications. The government's past attempts at such detentions have a checkered legal history.
In a subsequent 2008 case, the Supreme Court backed the legal rights of foreigners held at Guantanamo, ruling in the case of Lakhdar Boumediene that he had a right to access the U.S. courts.
"It's really crossing a constitutional Rubicon," said Jonathan Hafetz, American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represented Ali al Marri. Mr. al Marri recently pleaded guilty to being an al Qaeda sleeper agent after years being held without charge as an "enemy combatant." Mr. Hafetz says that President Obama is "taking steps that are inconsistent with our legal traditions and values. At the same, he's closing Guantanamo but he's creating a new Guantanamo in another form."
The government has tried indefinite detentions for cases unrelated to terrorism, particularly immigration and mental illness. A 2001 Supreme Court decision ruled it was illegal for the U.S. to indefinitely detain hundreds of Cuban refugees who arrived in the Mariel boatlift and who were deemed dangerous to release but whom the Cuban government refused to take back.
The administration is studying detention proposals, including one from South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who suggests a hybrid approach: applying military law to declare detainees a danger to the U.S., followed by reviews of the National Security Court to verify detainees' status. On Wednesday, the president discussed outlines of such a plan with representatives of civil liberties and human rights groups at a meeting in the White House. These groups, including the ACLU, led the legal assault that won important court-ordered curbs on the legal underpinnings of the Bush administration's national security policy. They promise to the same to Mr. Obama's. | ||||||
Posted by:Steve White |
#6 Need to shackle all the prisoners to the floor of some worthless ship's cargo hold, and steam VERY SLOWLY along the Somali coast. Follow it in a Los Angeles-class submarine. When the Somalis attack, the submarine will set of the scuttling charges hidden in the bilges. Solve two problems at one time. |
Posted by: Old Patriot 2009-05-23 23:02 |
#5 Justice Kennedy chose to ignore the court's own precedent on the subject and create both new purview and powers for the courts. |
Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-05-23 15:20 |
#4 The USSC (SCOTUS) went off the rails in several of the detention cases - and it is Bush's failure that he didn't step up to the plate (esp. after the second unreasonable rejection of tribunal procedures, a decision the chief justice decried as "bait and switch" that threatened to undermine the rule of law and the Constitution) and say "no more - the SCOTUS has taken a step to subvert the Constitution, and is acting in a frivolous matter concerning national security, and their ruling will not be complied with". The resulting brouhaha would not be a "constitutional crisis" - it would be a RECOGNITION of the crisis caused by the SCOTUS. But that sort of leadership is unimaginable, even from Bush. The farce that the SCOTUS has, for the most part, become for many years now on so many issues will eventually get people killed, and not just make them poorer and less free. |
Posted by: Verlaine 2009-05-23 13:50 |
#3 Ummm, this just hit, it's off the wall enough to really work, put the exttremely bad on "Prison Boats" in guantanimo bay and wait for the Cubans to "Liberate, them, I got the idea from a new york friend who (In the last Garbage strike) wrapped his garbage in fancy wrapping paper, and left them in his car with the door unlocked, the pretty garbage just vanished. |
Posted by: Redneck Jim 2009-05-23 13:01 |
#2 Hey Superzero, the problem's been addressed befoe, it's called 'a firing squad'. |
Posted by: Redneck Jim 2009-05-23 12:53 |
#1 Repopulate Atlantis! |
Posted by: Glenmore 2009-05-23 08:33 |