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March 16, 2005

First They Came for the "Enemy Combatants"

We're all familiar with the federal government's criminal treatment of Jose Padilla: declaring a U.S. citizen an enemy combatant and keeping him locked up in a military prison without charging him with a crime or otherwise according him his constitutional rights.

You may not be familiar, however, with the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. (I know I wasn't familiar with it.) Here's how Jacob Hornberger describes it in his latest column:

Al-Marri’s case, as I mentioned earlier, involves a much rawer exercise of military power. Al-Marri was actually indicted for terrorism-related offenses in federal district court, first in New York, and then later in Illinois. Motions were being heard in his case and the attorneys were preparing for trial, which is the normal procedure in federal criminal cases.

All of a sudden, federal prosecutors requested the presiding judge in the case to dismiss the indictment against al-Marri. The judge granted the request, but “with prejudice,” which means that under the Sixth Amendment bar against double jeopardy, U.S. officials can now never bring those particular criminal charges against al-Marri again. Once the order of dismissal was entered in the Illinois criminal case, U.S. officials secured an official “enemy combatant” designation from President Bush and immediately transferred al-Marri to the same military brig in South Carolina where they are still holding Padilla.

In other words, the government feared it wouldn't obtain a conviction in a fair trial, so it simply took al-Marri out of the criminal justice system and threw him in a military prison, where he can (the feds hope) be held indefinitely.

Hornberger continues:

Make no mistake about it: The governmental power exercised in the Padilla and al-Marri cases will be a back door to military control of our nation.

He is, of course, correct. Unfortunately, most people will figure that Padilla and al-Marri are terrorists and had it coming to them and that we can trust our government (at least as long as it's run by each person's preferred political party) not to do this stuff to innocent citizens.

(Link courtesy Antiwar.com.)

Posted by Mike Tennant at March 16, 2005 03:22 PM

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Posted by: Jessica at April 6, 2005 02:19 AM

Posted by: Alice Deigh at September 9, 2005 04:56 AM

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