Keep the Great Writ alive (Habeas Corpus)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Date: September 26, 2006 12:25:10 AM EDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, David Farber  
<dave () farber net>
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





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