Court Ruling On Detention Stands for Transparency

Summary

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Imagine you are living - legally, I should add - in a foreign country. Maybe you're a student, living with your family, studying at a local university. One day, you are charged with credit-card fraud and making false statements. But you never go to trial on those charges. Instead, you are held in a military prison for four years and allowed no outside contact, even with family or lawyers, for the first 16 months of detention. You are denied basic necessities, exposed to sensory deprivation, threatened with rape and sodomy. Still, no other charges are filed.

You are "designated" an enemy combatant, but there is no opportunity to challenge that designation. No tribunal, not even a military one, reviews the determination. It is enough that the country's leader says you are a danger. The "Justice" ministry supports him. When you finally find lawyers to challenge your detention, "Justice" department lawyers fight them every step of the way. And for two years, they win.

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Extract

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Court Ruling On Detention Stands for Transparency

What kind of country would do that to a person? Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, has been held under precisely these circumstances for the last four years in a military prison in South Carolina...

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