Don't Trust Me on Guantanamo, Read This: Ann Woolner

[marmar]

from Bloomberg:



Don't Trust Me on Guantanamo, Read This: Ann Woolner (Update1)

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 naivete 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. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=abXj9r9Ial1o&refer=home

[Tutonic]

1. The MCA includes "enemy combatant" to mean any person that

gives aid, support or sypmathizes with a terrorist or terrorist organization. The accepted international definition that applied to a prisoner during a time of war was buried by Congress and the Administration. Now any US citizen that is sympathetic to any aspect of the Iraqi war is an enemy combatant. Thus the need to build secret prisons in Poland, Germany, Kenya, Mexico, Honduras, and the US to name a few.