The Bush Administration's senior people - Bush, Cheney, Gonazales, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, etc. etc. - have probably considered themselves immune from being sued or prosecuted now that they are out of office.
Not so! - as a decision the other day shows. One time A-G Ashcroft is now open to being sued a US Appeals Court has held.
Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon, explains:
"Yesterday -- in a very significant decision (.pdf) written by Bush-43-appointed federal judge Milan Smith and joined by a Reagan-appointed judge -- the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a lawsuit to proceed that was brought against John Ashcroft for the illegal and unconstitutional detention of American Muslims. The suit was brought by Abdullah al-Kidd, an American citizen of African-American descent who converted to Islam. Al-Kidd was arrested, detained under abusive conditions, and then had his movements and freedoms severely restricted for sixteen months despite no evidence that he had done anything wrong.
The suit arises out of a policy established by Ashcroft of abusing the "material witness" statute, which authorizes the detention of key witnesses to a criminal case where it's likely they will be unavailable to testify in the absence of their pre-trial detention. Ashcroft used that statute as a pretext for arresting American Muslims where there was insufficient evidence to establish probable cause they had committed a crime (the standard required to justify their arrest). In other words, Ashcroft's DOJ would pretend that they wanted to detain Muslim citizens because they were "material witnesses" to a crime, when the real reason was that they suspected them of Terrorist connections and wanted to arrest and investigate them but lacked the evidence required by law to justify an arrest -- i.e., they wanted to "preventively detain" them in the absence of any criminal wrongdoing.
The real significance of this case is that it highlights the dangers and evils of preventive detention -- an issue that will be front and center when Obama shortly presents his proposal for a preventive detention scheme, something he first advocated in May. What Ashcroft is accused of doing illegally is exactly the same thing Obama wants the legal power to do (except that Obama's powers would presumably apply to foreign nationals, not citizens): namely, order people imprisoned as Terrorist suspects -- "preventively detained" -- where there is insufficient evidence to prove they committed any crime."
Not so! - as a decision the other day shows. One time A-G Ashcroft is now open to being sued a US Appeals Court has held.
Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon, explains:
"Yesterday -- in a very significant decision (.pdf) written by Bush-43-appointed federal judge Milan Smith and joined by a Reagan-appointed judge -- the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a lawsuit to proceed that was brought against John Ashcroft for the illegal and unconstitutional detention of American Muslims. The suit was brought by Abdullah al-Kidd, an American citizen of African-American descent who converted to Islam. Al-Kidd was arrested, detained under abusive conditions, and then had his movements and freedoms severely restricted for sixteen months despite no evidence that he had done anything wrong.
The suit arises out of a policy established by Ashcroft of abusing the "material witness" statute, which authorizes the detention of key witnesses to a criminal case where it's likely they will be unavailable to testify in the absence of their pre-trial detention. Ashcroft used that statute as a pretext for arresting American Muslims where there was insufficient evidence to establish probable cause they had committed a crime (the standard required to justify their arrest). In other words, Ashcroft's DOJ would pretend that they wanted to detain Muslim citizens because they were "material witnesses" to a crime, when the real reason was that they suspected them of Terrorist connections and wanted to arrest and investigate them but lacked the evidence required by law to justify an arrest -- i.e., they wanted to "preventively detain" them in the absence of any criminal wrongdoing.
The real significance of this case is that it highlights the dangers and evils of preventive detention -- an issue that will be front and center when Obama shortly presents his proposal for a preventive detention scheme, something he first advocated in May. What Ashcroft is accused of doing illegally is exactly the same thing Obama wants the legal power to do (except that Obama's powers would presumably apply to foreign nationals, not citizens): namely, order people imprisoned as Terrorist suspects -- "preventively detained" -- where there is insufficient evidence to prove they committed any crime."
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