Military given go-ahead to detain US terrorist suspects without trial
Civil rights groups dismayed as Barack Obama abandons commitment to veto new security law contained in defence bill
Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.
Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of "a war that appears to have no end".
The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the "war on terror" to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention.
The legislation's supporters in Congress say it simply codifies existing practice, such as the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. But the law's critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country.
"It's something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent."
There was heated debate in both houses of Congress on the legislation, requiring that suspects with links to Islamist foreign terrorist organisations arrested in the US, who were previously held by the FBI or other civilian law enforcement agencies, now be handed to the military and held indefinitely without trial.
The law applies to anyone "who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaida, the Taliban or associated forces".
Senator Lindsey Graham said the extraordinary measures were necessary because terrorism suspects were wholly different to regular criminals.
"We're facing an enemy, not a common criminal organisation, who will do anything and everything possible to destroy our way of life," he said. "When you join al-Qaida you haven't joined the mafia, you haven't joined a gang. You've joined people who are bent on our destruction and who are a military threat."
Graham added that it was right that Americans should be subject to the detention law as well as foreigners. "It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next," he said. "And when they say, 'I want my lawyer,' you tell them, 'Shut up. You don't get a lawyer.'"
Other senators supported the new powers on the grounds that al-Qaida was fighting a war inside the US and that its followers should be treated as combatants, not civilians with constitutional protections.
But another conservative senator, Rand Paul, a strong libertarian, has said "detaining citizens without a court trial is not American" and that if the law passes "the terrorists have won".
"We're talking about American citizens who can be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantánamo Bay and held indefinitely. It puts every single citizen American at risk," he said. "Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us? The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly named Patriot Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism. This is simply not borne out by the facts."
Paul was backed by Senator Dianne Feinstein.
"Congress is essentially authorising the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge," she said. "We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge."
Paul said there were already strong laws against support for terrorist groups. He noted that the definition of a terrorism suspect under existing legislation was so broad that millions of Americans could fall within it.
"There are laws on the books now that characterise who might be a terrorist: someone missing fingers on their hands is a suspect according to the department of justice. Someone who has guns, someone who has ammunition that is weatherproofed, someone who has more than seven days of food in their house can be considered a potential terrorist," Paul said. "If you are suspected because of these activities, do you want the government to have the ability to send you to Guantánamo Bay for indefinite detention?"
Under the legislation suspects can be held without trial "until the end of hostilities". They will have the right to appear once a year before a committee that will decide if the detention will continue.
The Senate is expected to give final approval to the bill before the end of the week. It will then go to the president, who previously said he would block the legislation not on moral grounds but because it would "cause confusion" in the intelligence community and encroached on his own powers.
But on Wednesday the White House said Obama had lifted the threat of a veto after changes to the law giving the president greater discretion to prevent individuals from being handed to the military.
Critics accused the president of caving in again to pressure from some Republicans on a counter-terrorism issue for fear of being painted in next year's election campaign as weak and of failing to defend America.
Human Rights Watch said that by signing the bill Obama would go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.
"The paradigm of the war on terror has advanced so far in people's minds that this has to appear more normal than it actually is," Malinowski said. "It wasn't asked for by any of the agencies on the frontlines in the fight against terrorism in the United States. It breaks with over 200 years of tradition in America against using the military in domestic affairs."
In fact, the heads of several security agencies, including the FBI, CIA, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general objected to the legislation. The Pentagon also said it was against the bill.
The FBI director, Robert Mueller, said he feared the law could compromise the bureau's ability to investigate terrorism because it would be more complicated to win co-operation from suspects held by the military.
"The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain co-operation from the persons in the past that we've been fairly successful in gaining," he told Congress.
Civil liberties groups say the FBI and federal courts have dealt with more than 400 alleged terrorism cases, including the successful prosecutions of Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber", Umar Farouk, the "underwear bomber", and Faisal Shahzad, the "Times Square bomber".
Elements of the law are so legally confusing, as well as being constitutionally questionable, that any detentions are almost certain to be challenged all the way to the supreme court.
Malinowski said "vague language" was deliberately included in the bill in order to get it passed. "The very lack of clarity is itself a problem. If people are confused about what it means, if people disagree about what it means, that in and of itself makes it bad law," he said.
From CBS News
WH OKs military detention of terrorism suspects
(AP)
The White House is signing off on a controversial new law that would authorize the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain alleged al Qaeda members or other terrorist operatives captured on American soil.
As the bill neared final passage in the House of Representatives and the Senate on Wednesday, the Obama administration announced it would support passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contains slightly watered-down provisions giving the military a front line role in domestic terrorism cases.
The administration abandoned its long-held veto threat due to changes in the final version of the bill, namely that in its view, the military custody mandate has been "softened." The bill now gives the President the immediate power to issue a waiver of the military custody requirement, instead of the Defense Secretary, and gives the President discretion in implementing these new provisions.
"We have concluded that the language does not challenge or constrain the President's ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people, and the President's senior advisors will not recommend a veto," the White House statement said.
The detainee provisions are just one part of the annual NDAA authorizing $662 billion in federal defense spending next year.
While the bill never expanded the authority to detain American citizens indefinitely without charges, proponents said the legislation would codify court decisions finding the President does have the authority to declare "enemy combatants," as commander-in-chief and under the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force against al Qaeda and its allies. The administration, which has pledged not to use this power, believes the bill leaves this legal issue unresolved.
"By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in U.S. law," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side."
The debate over captured terrorism suspectsSenate keeps controversial detainee policy in defense bill
Bagram: The Other Guantanamo?
FBI Director Robert Mueller, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, said the provisions still could create confusion among counter-terrorism professionals.
"My concern is that you don't want FBI agents and the military showing up at the same time, with some uncertainty" as to who has control, Mueller said, and raised this hypothetical example: "A case that we're investigating on three individuals, two of whom are American citizens and would not go to military custody and the third is not an American citizen and could go to military custody?"
Mueller was joined earlier in the detainee debate by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in opposing the military custody provision, because they said it might inhibit flexibility by counter-terrorism professionals, restrain federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities, and risk losing the cooperation of terror arrestees.
"If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American's reputation for upholding the rule of law," said Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era, and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill."
Bill opponents have noted that in the decade since the 9/11, the government has successfully convicted over 300 people for terrorism-related crimes, including thwarted plots to bomb passenger jets, subway lines, and landmarks such as Times Square and the Sears Tower.
By comparison, the military justice system, although stymied by constitutional challenges, has completed only six cases in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where 170 detainees remain.
From PrisonPlanet
'Indefinite Detention' Bill Heads To Obama's Desk As White House Drops Veto Threat
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
UPDATE: Obama has dropped his threat to veto the bill and is now expected to sign it into law. Remember – it was Obama’s White House that demanded the law apply to U.S. citizens in the first place.
The bill which would codify into law the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens is about to be passed and sent to Obama’s desk to be signed into law, even as some news outlets still erroneously report that the legislation does not apply to U.S. citizens.
“The House on Wednesday afternoon approved the rule for the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), setting up an hour of debate and a vote in the House later this afternoon,” reports the Hill.
Mainstream news outlets like The Hill, as well as neo-con blogs like Red State, are still pretending the indefinite detention provision doesn’t apply to American citizens, even though three of the bill’s primary sponsors, Senator Carl Levin, Senator John McCain, and Senator Lindsey Graham, said it does during speeches on the Senate floor.
“It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next,” remarked Graham. “And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.’”
As Levin said last week, it was the White House itself that demanded Section 1031 apply to American citizens.
“The language which precluded the application of Section 1031 to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved…and the administration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section,” said Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
Senator McCain also told Rand Paul during a hearing on the bill that American citizens could be declared an enemy combatant, sent to Guantanamo Bay and detained indefinitely, “no matter who they are.”
Quite how those still in denial could even entertain the notion that the bill would not apply to American citizens when the Obama administration is already enforcing a policy of state assassination and killing American citizens it claims are “terrorists,” without having to present any evidence or go through any legal process, is beyond naive.
With the White House having largely resolved its concerns with the bill, which had nothing to do with the ‘indefinite detention’ provision, Obama could put pen to paper as early as tomorrow on a law that if recognized will nullify the bill of rights – ironically tomorrow is “Bill of Rights Day”.
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