Supreme Court Ruling

[scott_harpell]

an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals.

[scott_harpell]

In 2001, four Pakistani Britons, Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul and another friend, Monir, travel to Pakistan for a wedding and in a urge of idealism, decide to see the situation of war torn Afganistan which is being bombed by the American forces in retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Once there, with the loss of Monir in the wartime chaos, they are captured by Northern Alliance fighters.

 

Sounds like a legit story to me. I am surprised the Army didn't buy it.

[tvashtarkatena]

I've already posted Article 3, ratified by Congress (and therefore the law of the land) which prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners anywhere, anytime. Guantanamo has been a clear violation of that law, as well as a stain on our national honor and integrity. But fuck it, what does honor matter these days? That's just a nice, quaint word from a distant past.

[111]

 

"By a 5-to-3 vote, the court said that the procedures set up by the president violate both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the laws of war set out in the Geneva Conventions."

 

 

Link!

 

pretty sure there are 9 justices, not 8

[tvashtarkatena]

It was a 5-3 decision. Happens all the time, through recusals or absences.

[STP]

Here's what one of the architects of our system said:

 

"The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume." --Thomas Jefferson to A. H. Rowan, 1798. ME 10:61

 

He even went further:

 

"Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? The parties who may be arrested may be charged instantly with a well defined crime; of course, the judge will remand them. If the public safety requires that the government should have a man imprisoned on less probable testimony in those than in other emergencies, let him be taken and tried, retaken and retried, while the necessity continues, only giving him redress against the government for damages. Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treasons, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:97

 

-- Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government

 

His words aren't infallible but he had a sound basis for his beliefs especially when you take into account our evolving understanding of the incarceration situation.

 

America's prison for terrorists often held the wrong men