Monday, November 14, 2005

Wow. Just... wow.

From today's WaPo:

As the Senate prepared to vote Thursday to abolish the writ of habeas corpus, Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl were railing about lawyers like me. Filing lawsuits on behalf of the terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Terrorists! Kyl must have said the word 30 times.

As I listened, I wished the senators could meet my client Adel.

Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken.

The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later. And these facts would still be a secret but for one thing: habeas corpus.

Divine Right of Kings makes a comeback, I guess.

1 Comments:

At 8:37 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

I don't think it's going to hold.

Or maybe it will take some other government detaining and abusing some US personnel before the torture apologists and the factions who see terrorists in every taxi in New York will understand that disregarding these rules cuts both ways.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home