[IP] Keep the Great Writ alive (Habeas Corpus)
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger@xxxxxxx>
Date: September 26, 2006 12:25:10 AM EDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, David Farber
<dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Keep the Great Writ alive (Habeas Corpus)
Keep the Great Writ alive
For eight centuries, habeas corpus has shielded people from detention
without trial. The Senate "compromise" denies this right -- and
threatens the rule of law.
By Michael Ratner, with Sara Miles
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/09/26/habeas/
Sept. 26, 2006 | For nearly five years, I've been fighting attempts
by the Bush administration to sweep away the cornerstone of our
justice system: habeas corpus, which protects people from being
summarily detained without trial. Considered the hallmark of Western
liberty, habeas corpus has its origins in the Magna Carta of 1215.
The "Great Writ" ended kings' power to kidnap people at will, lock
them in dungeons and never bring them to court. Habeas corpus forever
marked the line between authority under law and authority that thinks
it is the law.
As president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, I've challenged
the Bush administration for acting as a law unto itself and blatantly
disregarding the Great Writ in its prison camp at Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba. Twice, the Supreme Court has insisted that the administration
respect habeas corpus; repeatedly, the White House has ignored the
court's rulings, going to Congress to get approval for previously
unthinkable kinds of detention.
Now, within the next few days, it is conceivable that Congress will
abolish the writ of habeas corpus for any non-citizen who is detained
outside the country. Stripping away the political nitpicking,
linguistic compromises, calculated deal-making and cynical
maneuvering of last week's "compromise" in Congress, two questions
remain at the center of legislation about the rights of prisoners in
Guantánamo.
The first, about torture and the Geneva Conventions, is
straightforward: Are we human beings?
The second, about habeas corpus, is, do we believe in the rule of law?
I've spent my life defending victims of torture, and I firmly believe
that to be human means recognizing that torture, whether committed by
Nazis, Stalinists, Islamic fundamentalists or Americans, is never
justified. Inexcusably, the compromise forged by the Bush
administration and Republican senators now blurs the line on Article
3 of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits "violence to life and
person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel
treatment and torture" and "outrages upon personal dignity, in
particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." It's morally
corrupt to attempt to parse exactly what kinds of cruelty, which
degree of mutilation, and what depth of degradation are OK: This
cannot be an area where "compromise" is acceptable.
But it's also crucial to understand that this legislation places our
very belief in the rule of law at risk. The contempt for the law
shown by recent developments disturbs me enormously, and shows how
far our national values have been hijacked by the extreme right and
its partisan agenda.
My office represents and coordinates writs of habeas corpus on behalf
of all 460 detainees held at Guantánamo. Almost none of these
detainees have been charged with a crime. Many, according to the
administration's own claims, have never actively taken hostile action
against the United States, but were turned over to the Americans by
war lords or bounty hunters. Others are confused, elderly, or simply
arrested in error. As Col. Bill Cline, deputy camp commander at
Guantánamo, acknowledged, "Some of the prisoners are victims of
circumstance, caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time."
But without habeas corpus hearings, there is no way for detainees to
know the charges against them, or to refute any evidence that might
be wrong. Like our client Maher Arar -- a Canadian sent by the United
States to Syria, where he was tortured in a secret prison until the
Canadians finally demanded his release -- they are unable to prove
their innocence because they have no way to test their detention. And
without accountability to a court, as we have seen over and over,
abuse of prisoners quickly becomes rampant.
<snip>
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
http://www.ibd.com
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/