All we needed was an iron mask.

[gridlore]

U.S. citizen held nearly for three years as enemy combatant back in Saudi Arabia

Yaser Esam Hamdi, the U.S. citizen who was captured on the Afghanistan battlefield and held without charges for nearly three years, has been freed and returned to Saudi Arabia on Monday, his lawyer said.

A military plane carrying Hamdi landed at 6 a.m. Eastern time in Riyadh, Frank Dunham Jr. said. Hamdi's case led to a Supreme Court decision limiting the president's powers to indefinitely hold enemy combatants.

Dunham said he talked with Hamdi by telephone just after the plane landed Monday, and said Hamdi told him he felt "awesome."

Hamdi will be not be charged with any crime under an agreement negotiated by his lawyer and the Justice Department. The agreement requires Hamdi to give up his American citizenship, renounce terrorism and not sue the U.S. government over his captivity.

No charges were ever filed, no actual evidence of wrong-doing was ever made, and we held this man in solitary confinement for three bloody years!

Ladies and gentlemen, I direct your attention to the Constitution of the United States:

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

We held that man for three years without filing a charge, and he wasn't allowed to see his lawyer for the first two years.

This administration is ignoring the Constitution. They need to be dumped. I'm sorry the due process of law is inconveinent to Bush and Ashcroft, but it is one of those little things that makes us different from places like, oh, Saddam's Iraq (which was also known for holding people for years with no trial.)

Comments

[thebitterguy]

But he was helping the terrorists!

Don't you feel Safe now?

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Any evidence of either of those? :-(

[thebitterguy]

Only terrorists want evidence.

Do you wish to rephrase that question, citizen?

[murphymom.livejournal.com]

Not only do they need to be dumped, they need to be brought up on charges - in fact, an impeachement proceeding wouldn't be out of line, snce the mofos pledged to uphold the Constitution and they've clearly been in violation.

Or, to quote a bumpersticker - "Clinton only did it to one intern."

[bunyip.livejournal.com]

It'll get nowhere

[murphymom.livejournal.com]

Far enough to permanently taint them and the sham they've made of what was once "the party of Abe Lincoln" - that's enough for me.

[bunyip.livejournal.com]

Very true.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Holding a POW is _not_ a criminal prosecution.

[thebitterguy]

I thought he was being held as an 'enemy combatant', so he could be 'interrogated' and 'held in spartan living conditions' without 'bothering to take treaties designed to protect human rights' into 'consideration'.

[fangorn.livejournal.com]

So, he received visits from representatives of the International Red Cross?

To my mind, the issue is not whether he was accused as a criminal (and therefore entitled to certain rights under the Constitution) or being held as a prisoner of war (and therefore entitled to certain rights under the Geneva Conventions (Mr. Berry, would you care to provide some education on this matter?)), but that the current administration invented the category of enemy combatant for the purpose of evading its responsibilities under the existing classifications.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

The Geneva Accords have this to say about the treatment of prisoners:

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm

Mr. Hamdi would fall under the heading of Article 4. Section A, Section 2.

2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) That of carrying arms openly;

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

The US claim is that he didn't meet these requirements, and was thus an unlawful combatant. Of course, there isn't a shred of evidence that he wasn't acting in accordance with 4.A.2.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Except that in this (http://www.livejournal.com/users/gridlore/584997.html?thread=1501477&style=mine#t1501477) message you say he was emphatically not a POW. Which is it?

It's my understanding that "enemy combatant" is is a superset of POW. It breaks down into lawful enemy combatants, described above, and unlwaful enemy combatants, like spies and such.

If there is a presumptionm that he did meet the requirments in the absence of evidence that he did not, why was a humanitarian aid worker (Hamdi's father claimed Hamdi was there to render humanitarian aid) carrying arms openly?

[rboleyn.livejournal.com]

If he was a POW his family should have been told, he should've been declared one, and the Red Cross should've been allowed access.

However, as he was a US citizen it seems unlikely to me that he could be an enemy combatant. Instead, he would be a traitor, and therefore should've been _charged_ with Treason, and thus given access to a lawyer, etc., etc.

Either way, he was deprived of his rights. Not only that, but to be granted freedom he had to give up a whole bunch of other things that he probably has a right to retain.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Except he most specifically was not a POW. POWs (actually called EPWs these days, Enemy Prisoners of War) have rights.

EPWs cannot be held in solitary confinement with no contact with the outside world for three years. That's called torture.

[melyxa.livejournal.com]

As fangorn pointed out, the thief in chief and his gang of black shirts, aka the administration invented the category of enemy combatant for the purpose of evading its responsibilities under the existing classifications. By constructing a whole subset of people who, for their purposes, exist outside of either United States or International law, they comfort themselves that their actions are "merely" a-legal, as opposed to illegal. Cold comfort.

They're using what lawyers and Constitutionalists call a "term of art." They declare that "for the purposes of x legal circumstances, what the rest of the world commonly calls a vulture is a bluebird of happiness." Then, whenever thereafter you hear them talking about bluebirds of happiness, you're supposed to know they mean vultures. Whether or not you've had access to the initial documents, or codiciles of documents, that declared that the term of art for vulture is bluebird of happiness.

Either way, they're pooping all over the law.