As the Senate prepared to vote Thursday to abolish the writ of habeas corpus, Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl were railing about lawyers like me. Filing lawsuits on behalf of the terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Terrorists! Kyl must have said the word 30 times.

As I listened, I wished the senators could meet my client Adel.

Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken.

The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later. And these facts would still be a secret but for one thing: habeas corpus.

Only habeas corpus got Adel a chance to tell a federal judge what had happened. Only habeas corpus revealed that it wasn't just Adel who was innocent -- it was Abu Bakker and Ahmet and Ayoub and Zakerjain and Sadiq -- all Guantanamo "terrorists" whom the military has found innocent.

Habeas corpus is older than even our Constitution. It is the right to compel the executive to justify itself when it imprisons people. But the Senate voted to abolish it for Adel, in favor of the same "combatant status review tribunal" that has already exonerated him. That secret tribunal didn't have much impact on his life, but Graham says it is good enough.

Adel lives in a small fenced compound 8,000 miles from his home and family. The Defense Department says it is trying to arrange for a country to take him -- some country other than his native communist China, where Muslims like Adel are routinely tortured. It has been saying this for more than two years. But the rest of the world is not rushing to aid the Bush administration, and meanwhile Adel is about to pass his fourth anniversary in a U.S. prison.

He has no visitors save his lawyers. He has no news in his native language, Uighur. He cannot speak to his wife, his children, his parents. When I first met him on July 15, in a grim place they call Camp Echo, his leg was chained to the floor. I brought photographs of his children to another visit, but I had to take them away again. They were "contraband," and he was forbidden to receive them from me.

In a wiser past, we tried Nazi war criminals in the sunlight. Summing up for the prosecution at Nuremberg, Robert Jackson said that "the future will never have to ask, with misgiving: 'What could the Nazis have said in their favor?' History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. . . . The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength."

The world has never doubted the judgment at Nuremberg. But no one will trust the work of these secret tribunals.


The secretary of defense chained Adel, took him to Cuba, imprisoned him and sends teams of lawyers to fight any effort to get his case heard. Now the Senate has voted to lock down his only hope, the courts, and to throw away the key forever. Before they do this, I have a last request on his behalf. I make it to the 49 senators who voted for this amendment.

I'm back in Cuba today, maybe for the last time. Come down and join me. Sen. Graham, Sen. Kyl -- come meet the sleepy-eyed young man with the shy smile and the gentle manner. Afterward, as you look up at the bright stars over Cuba, remembering what you've seen in Camp Echo, see whether the word "terrorist" comes quite so readily to your lips. See whether the urge to abolish judicial review rests easy on your mind, or whether your heart begins to ache, as mine does, for the country I thought I knew.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/13/AR2005111301061.html


Holy skiznit why has this not been all over the media????

Goodbye America, joey, is there room for a few of us?

It is, sad isn't it? It is sad that people are so eager to throw away the legal traditions of our country due to fear.

People who decide to stay Muslim in this day and age are making a conscious decision to engage in the Jihad and thus align themselves with Muslim terrorists. The tragedy is their decision, not the fact that non-citizens do not and should not have Constitutional rights. Otherwise they could claim their Second Amendment rights are being violated and get an ACLU lawyer to get them firearms brought into the camp in Cuba, which has living conditions far better than where they came from anyway.

Ok...let's apply your standards to a differenct scenario.
A group of Christians becomes upset, and start sending suicide bombers to take out shopping malls.
So, does this mean people who decide to stay Christian are just asking for persecution?
I think a reasonable person would have to say no.
You have well over 1 billion Muslims in the world....you don't have 1 billion people trying to kill us at every opportunity. The number of Muslims engaging in terrorist activities is much less than the actual number of Muslims.

Even human garbage deserves a trial. I don't understand why this is continually up for debate. Trial is an American obligation.

CCR Statement on the Graham-Levin Habeas Jurisdiction Stripping Amendment



Synopsis

November 15, 2005 – The Center for Constitutional Rights condemns the Graham-Levin Amendment to the Military Authorization Bill, passed today by the United States Senate. This bill is directed at those persons held at the Guantanamo prison camp. For the first time in our history, it would strip people of a right which has been the shining jewel of Western jurisprudence since the 13th Century, the right to petition a federal court for a writ of habeas corpus.




It is particularly disturbing that this legislation was enacted stealthily and without any meaningful deliberation by the Senate or its Judiciary Committee. As happens so often, it is easy to carelessly give up our rights and much more difficult to get them back, once lost.

That these prisoners are so called ‘enemy combatants’ does not justify this suspension of the writ, since it has applied during earlier times of war, in particular World War II and the American Civil War. Fundamentally, the writ of habeas corpus requires any authority that holds a prisoner to present that prisoner before an independent magistrate and show good cause why that person has been seized and is being detained. It is a linchpin to the rule of law and the proposition that individuals have rights and that the power of government is limited.

Many Guantanamo prisoners were seized nowhere near a battlefield and are absolutely innocent and being held without any justification. What the government fears is not judicial interference in the war on terror. What it fears is objective judicial oversight that allows a public challenge to the abuse of innocent people.

We believe that this blow to our fundamental rights is just the beginning. ‘Enemy combatants’ are an easy target and therefore it is easy to erase their rights. However, this Administration is no friend of the Bill of Rights and this bill will serve as a model for the future as the president and Congress attempt to undermine our most basic rights by stripping federal courts of jurisdiction to hear cases raising issues of free speech, freedom of religion, racial discrimination and countless other rights for which the American people have struggled so long and so hard.


http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=0A858fho7K&Content=669


I am disturbed that I can't anything about this on any major media networks, no debate, nothing, I guess that's how it will go down, behind closed doors in absolute silence.

One day people might wake up and wonder what country they are in, it will be too late then. I don't think they'll care though honestly, as long as they hhave beer and football..

People who decide to stay Muslim in this day and age are making a conscious decision to engage in the Jihad and thus align themselves with Muslim terrorists.

That's utter bilge, Snouter! Being Muslim is not illegal, thank God! If you assume (and you have chosen to) that all Muslims are terrorists, then outlawing it may be the next step... But be careful! Once one religion is illegal, that sets a very dangerous precedent...