Ann Woolner lays bare the Guantanamo ruling by the Supreme Court
This news and commentary is worth the read. I have been saying this for years. See what the Court has said about Guantanamo detaineees. It is posted on Bloomberg and written by Ann Woolner. Here it is and the link:
Don't Believe Me About Guantanamo Bay, Read This: Ann Woolner
Commentary by Ann Woolner
July 7 (Bloomberg) -- Because of the close, ideologically divided vote, you may give slim credit to last month's 5-4 Supreme Court decision slamming the U.S. handling of suspected enemy combatants.
You might write off as knee-jerk liberal, Sept. 10 naïveté the commentary (like mine) that says even in time of war it's un-American to imprison people indefinitely with no real chance to show they were mistakenly nabbed.
If you believe the U.S. military is doing a sufficiently OK job sorting enemy from friend at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, I have a court ruling for you.
The federal appeals court in Washington D.C., the first court to look into the facts behind a specific Gitmo detention, decided the military had no credible evidence to label a man an enemy combatant and keep him locked up for six and a half years.
``It is undisputed that he is not a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and that he has never participated in any hostile action against the United States or its allies,'' the court said.
Made public last week, the ruling found not a shred of credible evidence to support the government's claim that Huzaifa Parhat had anything at all to do with America's enemies, whether through combat or support or association with a group that may have associated with them.
One of Many
Parhat is one of 13 Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo who fled persecution in China, camped in Afghanistan and wound up in Pakistan, where authorities handed him over to the U.S. His case is essentially identical to the dozen other detainees who are all members of the Uighur ethnic group. (That's pronounced WEE- gur.)
Beyond those 13 cases, the Parhat decision shows how little it takes to get labeled an enemy combatant and imprisoned for years on end.
You can't slough this one off as some nutty ruling by a bunch of ACLU-loving, Democratic-appointed activist judges. The three judges on this panel, which ruled unanimously, were appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
They include the Chief Judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, David Sentelle, protégé of former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms and one of the federal judiciary's most conservative members. During his time on the bench, Sentelle has voted to set aside the Iran-Contra convictions of Oliver North and John Poindexter and, at Helms's urging, named Kenneth Starr to lead the Whitewater investigation. He has also ruled in favor of the Bush administration on another Guantanamo issue.
No Hotbed
And then there's Thomas Griffith, whom Bush appointed to the bench in 2005, when Griffith was general counsel to Brigham Young University in Utah, hardly a hotbed of liberalism.
The Clinton nominee on the panel is Merrick Garland, who clerked for the late and liberal Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, worked in the Justice Department during the Clinton years and wrote the opinion in the Parhat case.
And yet, on this matter, they all agreed.
It's not as if the judges reached their conclusions using a defense-friendly, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt examination.
They abided by standards Congress set in 2005, which are so stacked in favor of the government that the Supreme Court ruled on June 12 that they don't afford necessary constitutional protections.
While awaiting that decision, the D.C. Court of Appeals used the standards, anyway, because Parhat's lawyers -- eager for a quick decision and confident of the outcome using any rules -- agreed to go along with them.
Flimsy, Unattributed Evidence
Sure enough, the court said the evidence against Parhat is so flimsy, so unattributed that it's impossible to assess, much less rely on.
``To affirm the tribunal's determination under such circumstances would be to place a judicial imprimatur on an act of essentially unreviewable executive discretion,'' the judges said.
``We won in their court, on their statute, before judges that are not predisposed to our side,'' says Sabin Willett, a Boston lawyer representing Parhat.
The worst the government could say about Parhat was that in 2001 he lived in an Afghan camp run by a leader of a Uighur independence group who trained him in weapons.
That group, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, may or may not associate with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which Parhat may or may not have realized because there's no evidence he's a member of the group, anyway, the government acknowledged.
Thinly Sourced
It's hard to pin down whether the military believes its own accusations, the court said. Even its classified information is so thinly sourced and so poorly presented that the prosecution couched allegations in terms like ``said to be'' and ``apparently.''
Parhat swore to the Combatant Status Military Tribunal that China was his only enemy, not the U.S. He denied membership in the Uighur independence group or any knowledge it might be connected to America's enemies.
He attributed at least some of the accusations against him to Chinese authorities, hardly credible informants when it comes to dissidents.
If Parhat's right, China is using the U.S. to carry out its persecution of the Uighurs. Nice, eh?
The appeals court ordered the government to either release Parhat or grant him a speedy new tribunal hearing. It also suggested he seek release through a habeas corpus petition in federal court, which Willett says he is pursuing.
``We need a remedy,'' says Willett, ``a real honest-to- goodness remedy and an end to all this appellate badminton.''
The administration says it has been looking for a place to send the Uighurs, even while insisting they are enemy combatants.
Why keep them in prison, why keep them fighting in court? Why not give them their freedom in the U.S., which robbed them of it in the first place?
At the very least, admit we did wrong, stop fighting every single issue in court and look for a real solution to the self- inflicted disaster that is Guantanamo Bay.
(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg news columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
Ann did a great job not letting this story die away, as many wish she had. Bravo Ann!
Don't Believe Me About Guantanamo Bay, Read This: Ann Woolner
Commentary by Ann Woolner
July 7 (Bloomberg) -- Because of the close, ideologically divided vote, you may give slim credit to last month's 5-4 Supreme Court decision slamming the U.S. handling of suspected enemy combatants.
You might write off as knee-jerk liberal, Sept. 10 naïveté the commentary (like mine) that says even in time of war it's un-American to imprison people indefinitely with no real chance to show they were mistakenly nabbed.
If you believe the U.S. military is doing a sufficiently OK job sorting enemy from friend at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, I have a court ruling for you.
The federal appeals court in Washington D.C., the first court to look into the facts behind a specific Gitmo detention, decided the military had no credible evidence to label a man an enemy combatant and keep him locked up for six and a half years.
``It is undisputed that he is not a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and that he has never participated in any hostile action against the United States or its allies,'' the court said.
Made public last week, the ruling found not a shred of credible evidence to support the government's claim that Huzaifa Parhat had anything at all to do with America's enemies, whether through combat or support or association with a group that may have associated with them.
One of Many
Parhat is one of 13 Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo who fled persecution in China, camped in Afghanistan and wound up in Pakistan, where authorities handed him over to the U.S. His case is essentially identical to the dozen other detainees who are all members of the Uighur ethnic group. (That's pronounced WEE- gur.)
Beyond those 13 cases, the Parhat decision shows how little it takes to get labeled an enemy combatant and imprisoned for years on end.
You can't slough this one off as some nutty ruling by a bunch of ACLU-loving, Democratic-appointed activist judges. The three judges on this panel, which ruled unanimously, were appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
They include the Chief Judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, David Sentelle, protégé of former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms and one of the federal judiciary's most conservative members. During his time on the bench, Sentelle has voted to set aside the Iran-Contra convictions of Oliver North and John Poindexter and, at Helms's urging, named Kenneth Starr to lead the Whitewater investigation. He has also ruled in favor of the Bush administration on another Guantanamo issue.
No Hotbed
And then there's Thomas Griffith, whom Bush appointed to the bench in 2005, when Griffith was general counsel to Brigham Young University in Utah, hardly a hotbed of liberalism.
The Clinton nominee on the panel is Merrick Garland, who clerked for the late and liberal Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, worked in the Justice Department during the Clinton years and wrote the opinion in the Parhat case.
And yet, on this matter, they all agreed.
It's not as if the judges reached their conclusions using a defense-friendly, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt examination.
They abided by standards Congress set in 2005, which are so stacked in favor of the government that the Supreme Court ruled on June 12 that they don't afford necessary constitutional protections.
While awaiting that decision, the D.C. Court of Appeals used the standards, anyway, because Parhat's lawyers -- eager for a quick decision and confident of the outcome using any rules -- agreed to go along with them.
Flimsy, Unattributed Evidence
Sure enough, the court said the evidence against Parhat is so flimsy, so unattributed that it's impossible to assess, much less rely on.
``To affirm the tribunal's determination under such circumstances would be to place a judicial imprimatur on an act of essentially unreviewable executive discretion,'' the judges said.
``We won in their court, on their statute, before judges that are not predisposed to our side,'' says Sabin Willett, a Boston lawyer representing Parhat.
The worst the government could say about Parhat was that in 2001 he lived in an Afghan camp run by a leader of a Uighur independence group who trained him in weapons.
That group, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, may or may not associate with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which Parhat may or may not have realized because there's no evidence he's a member of the group, anyway, the government acknowledged.
Thinly Sourced
It's hard to pin down whether the military believes its own accusations, the court said. Even its classified information is so thinly sourced and so poorly presented that the prosecution couched allegations in terms like ``said to be'' and ``apparently.''
Parhat swore to the Combatant Status Military Tribunal that China was his only enemy, not the U.S. He denied membership in the Uighur independence group or any knowledge it might be connected to America's enemies.
He attributed at least some of the accusations against him to Chinese authorities, hardly credible informants when it comes to dissidents.
If Parhat's right, China is using the U.S. to carry out its persecution of the Uighurs. Nice, eh?
The appeals court ordered the government to either release Parhat or grant him a speedy new tribunal hearing. It also suggested he seek release through a habeas corpus petition in federal court, which Willett says he is pursuing.
``We need a remedy,'' says Willett, ``a real honest-to- goodness remedy and an end to all this appellate badminton.''
The administration says it has been looking for a place to send the Uighurs, even while insisting they are enemy combatants.
Why keep them in prison, why keep them fighting in court? Why not give them their freedom in the U.S., which robbed them of it in the first place?
At the very least, admit we did wrong, stop fighting every single issue in court and look for a real solution to the self- inflicted disaster that is Guantanamo Bay.
(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg news columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
Ann did a great job not letting this story die away, as many wish she had. Bravo Ann!
Labels: Ann Woolner, Bloomberg, Guantanamo detainees, Supreme Court
posted by Charles Amico at 5:57 AM
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