US Can’t Call Hold Enemy Combatants In US
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Law, Military, The War On TerrorismBig blow to the Bush administration. The important distinction here is that they can’t hold them on US soil. I’m sure this guy could be held at Guantanamo, but not here.
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.
“But military detention of al-Marri must cease,� Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the majority of a divided three-judge panel.
And what this all boils down to…
The court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, said a fundamental principle is at stake: military detention of someone who had lawfully entered the United States and established connections here, it said, violates the Constitution.
I have a lot to say about our detainee policy, but for now this is a win for the Constitution and all of our rights. Because we’re travelling down a slippery slope and I’m glad to see that the courts are throwing a little sand on there so we don’t fall too far.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 and is filed under Law, Military, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 12th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Nice fear-mongering Justin. Al Marri should go free - Libby in prison. You guys are as precious as little kittens.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Dossy, Dossy, Dossy. Given that the Administration has no case why shouldn’t he go free? Libby, on the other hand, was rightly convicted in a court of law. It says a great deal that you can’t see the difference.
June 13th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
No case? They’ve got him on being an Arab with a significant interest in Bin Laden and hydrogen cyanide in possession of al-Queda telephone cards opening opening up fraudulent bank accounts with bogus identification. That’s enough for me to comfortably but him the “enemy combatant” catagory, as well as, the “better safe than sorry catagory.” In the WoT the old maxim that “it is better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission” saves thousands of lives. The ruling will get overturned by a more nuanced SCOTUS ruling, which along with Hamdi and Padilla defines the constitutional edges between “crime” and “war”.
So we have the poster-boy terrorists versus Libby. Again, Libby was convicted for lying about a non-crime. Not for outing the bimbo. So Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy - I do see the difference, the very big difference. Both cases are political (war being an extension of politics), but one of them fraudulently declares itself to be justice. It says a great deal that you can’t see the similarities or the differences.