Habeas corpus

[teach1st]

Habeas corpus
St. Petersburg Times, 3/4/07, By Robyn Blumner

John Yoo, a former Justice Department apparatchik and an engineer of the Bush administration's post-9/11 dismantling of civil liberties, co-wrote a memo in December 2001. It essentially assured Defense Department higher-ups that prisoners held at a camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would not have access to American courts. The next month, so-called "enemy combatants" started to be transferred to Guantanamo with the idea that the men it held would be out of reach of any semblance of due process.

More than five years later, a disastrous ruling by a federal appellate court has given Yoo exactly what he and his bosses wanted. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has slammed the courthouse door to the hundreds of prisoners in Guantanamo, putting them in permanent legal purgatory.

In a 2-to-1 ruling, the court said that foreign-born prisoners held by the United States in a camp that is 90 miles off Florida's coast are stripped of their rights of habeas corpus. Congress asked for that result when it passed the abominable Military Commissions Act and the court has upheld its constitutionality.

So what if mistakes were made and innocents were imprisoned or if abuse occurred? The courts are closed.

More

[PDJane]

1. This is despicable.

It's pandering and it's stupidity and it's a war crime.

I hope I live long enough.......and the world survives this president long enough......to see these people in the Hague.

[Demeter]

2. Wouldn't It Be a Two-fer To get Some Bushbot Judges on War Crimes Charges, Too?

Laying in some popcorn....