Bush: Rewriting Law on the Fly Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Rocky Mountain News - June 24, 2002 Editorial Rewriting Law on the Fly The Bush administration is making a breathtaking assertion of its right to imprison an American citizen indefinitely, without access to a court or a lawyer, simply by designating the citizen an "enemy combatant." And who, precisely, is an enemy combatant? Anybody President Bush -- or his military commanders -- says. And, the administration asserts further, the courts have no jurisdiction to rule on whether the individual is or is not an enemy combatant. The Justice Department made this argument to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Yaser Hamdi, 21, who was captured in Afghanistan, sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and, when it turned out he may be an American, shipped to a Navy brig in Norfolk, Va., where he has been held incommunicado ever since. On the presumption he is an American and entitled, as is every American, to basic constitutional rights, a U.S. magistrate appointed a lawyer for Hamdi. The Justice Department refused to let the lawyer meet with Hamdi. A federal district judge twice ordered that the public defender be given free and private access to Hamdi. The department is appealing that order and seeking to prevent Hamdi from appearing before a judge under habeas corpus. The case has implications for Jose Padilla, 31, whom the Justice Department accuses of plotting to set off a "dirty bomb." Padilla, a native-born American arrested in Chicago, is also being held incommunicado without a lawyer or the right to see a judge. He doesn't even have the formality of being an enemy combatant; the administration hasn't charged him but won't let him go. There are ample precedents for the treatment of enemy combatants, but even here the administration has tried to finesse the international rules for prisoners of war, the Geneva Convention. The convention doesn't apply, it says, because these are "illegal" combatants. One senses that the administration thinks no law should govern its actions. Bush's hasty executive order of last November didn't anticipate the problem of American citizens being swept up in the terrorist dragnet, and now the administration is giving the chilling appearance of making up law as it goes along. The Bush administration wouldn't be the first government to use an emergency as a pretext for usurping basic legal protections. The administration has a way out, the precedent it set itself in the case of the so-called American Taliban, John Walker Lindh. Lindh was charged in a U.S. court with conspiring to kill Americans; he has a court-appointed defense team; and the preliminaries for his trial are now under way in Alexandria, Va. The administration insists the courts have no competence, no expertise and no business questioning its judgment in imprisoning people incommunicado. The circuit court and, if necessary, the Supreme Court should rule forcefully that they very much do have that right. Copyright 2002, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved. ================================================ Courtesy of: The Law Office of Jose Pertierra 1010 Vermont Avenue, NW #620 Washington, DC 20005 202 783 6666 JosePertierra@aol.com ================================================ ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytact-06.25.02-15:36:54-23048