{"id":1620,"date":"2006-09-26T09:15:44","date_gmt":"2006-09-26T13:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=1620"},"modified":"2006-09-26T09:15:44","modified_gmt":"2006-09-26T13:15:44","slug":"so-what-why-is-that-not-within-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1620","title":{"rendered":"So what? Why is that not within the law?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/param><\/param><\/object><\/center><\/p>\n

NAT HENTOFF<\/strong> | The Amnesty-for-Torturers Act?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Hentoff writes in his column in today’s Washington Times<\/em><\/a>: “Little attention is being paid to Section 6 of this Warner-McCain-Graham bill that denies the right to a habeas-corpus hearing not only to Guantanamo Bay prisoners, but to any alien detainee outside the United States designated by the president as an ‘enemy combatant.’ …<\/p>\n

“Nine retired federal judges have tried to awaken Congress to this constitutional crisis. Among them are such often-honored jurists as Shirley Hufstedler, Nathaniel Jones, Patricia Wald, H. Lee Sarokin and William Sessions (who was head of the CIA and the FBI). They write, particularly with regard to Mr. McCain’s concerns about torture, that without habeas petitions, how will the judiciary ensure that ‘Executive detentions are not grounded on torture’?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

CHRISTOPHER H. PYLE<\/strong> | The Amnesty-for-Torturers Act?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Professor Pyle is co-author of the book The President, Congress, and the Constitution<\/em>. He said today: “The proposed legislation is an amnesty bill for torturers.” He wrote in a recent oped titled “The War Crimes Scam<\/a>” that: “The Supreme Court’s decision last June in the Hamdan case threw the military, CIA, and administration into a panic. The Court didn’t just declare the military tribunals illegal. It held that the Geneva Conventions protect all detainees in the ‘war on terrorism,’ which meant that anyone who abused prisoners — or authorized their abuse — was vulnerable to prosecution as a war criminal. …<\/p>\n

“The torture and abuse were not random acts by guards and interrogators. They were part of a deliberate administration policy that began in November 2001 when President George W. Bush authorized military tribunals that were specifically designed to admit evidence based on torture. …<\/p>\n

“The new military tribunals won’t be permitted to admit evidence obtained by torture. However, they will be allowed to admit hearsay — secondhand accounts that seem reliable, but which will not expose the interrogators to embarrassing questions about their brutal methods. Then, to further hide the abuse of prisoners from judges and the public, these three senators will strip every court in the United States of authority to hear legal challenges by prisoners to their detention or mistreatment.<\/p>\n

“In short, the fix is in. Administration officials will be immune from future prosecution for authorizing, encouraging, justifying, and concealing torture and abuse. Interrogators can’t be prosecuted for carrying out these war crimes, and innocent prisoners can’t expose the government’s crimes in court, now or in the future.” Pyle is a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College specializing in Constitutional law and civil liberties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Prisoners Speak<\/strong><\/a>
\nBy Jonathan Raban<\/a><\/p>\n

“When we look back at the crumbling shell of Camp Delta, we will be forced to confront its lasting damage?to the Constitution, to the country, and to the rule of law,” writes Joseph Margulies in his superbly argued Guant?namo and the Abuse of Presidential Power<\/a>. As a lawyer representing two of the Tipton Three (Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal) among other Guant?namo detainees, Margulies is an interested party here, and his book is powerfully fueled by personal indignation at the injustice suffered by his clients. What makes it so remarkable is the cool eloquence and clarity with which Margulies conducts the lay reader on a revelatory and unexpectedly invigorating tour of the mephitic legal swamp of Guant?namo Bay.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NAT HENTOFF | The Amnesty-for-Torturers Act? Hentoff writes in his column in today’s Washington Times: “Little attention is being paid to Section 6 of this Warner-McCain-Graham bill that denies the right to a habeas-corpus hearing not only to Guantanamo Bay … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-q8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}