Senate Passes Detainee Bill

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — The Senate approved legislation this evening governing the interrogation and trials of terror suspects, establishing far-reaching new rules in the definition of who may be held and how they should be treated.

The vote, 65-to-34, came after more than 10 hours of often impassioned debate touching on the Constitution, the horrors of Sept. 11 and the nation’s role in the world, but it was also underscored by a measure of politics as Congress prepares to break for the final month of campaigning before closely fought midterm elections.

The legislation sets up rules for the military commissions that will allow the government to prosecute high-level terrorists including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It strips detainees of a habeas corpus right to challenge their detentions in court and broadly defines what kind of treatment of detainees is prosecutable as a war crime.

Read More at The New York Times

DOWNLOAD: Bill Number H.R.6166 for the 109th Congress

Bush Faces Wave of Challenges to Terror Law

The Bush administration yesterday faced a raft of legal challenges to a sweeping new regime for Guantánamo that would deny court oversight to detainees in the war on terror, and would bar prosecution of US personnel for war crimes.

Mr Bush is expected to move within days to sign into law proposals for the treatment and trial before military tribunals of the detainees. The legislation, approved by the senate on Thursday, is a victory for the White House over senate Republicans, who had resisted attempts to relax standards on the treatment of detainees, and depart from standard rules of evidence in their trials.

Read More at Guardian Unlimited, UK

FACT

Subsection 4(b) (26) of section 950v. of HR 6166 - Crimes triable by military commissions - includes the following definition.

“Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a military commission under this chapter may direct.” (emphasis added)

Response from The Center for Constitutional Rights

“Under this legislation, our clients at Guantánamo and hundreds of others detained by the U.S. around the world may remain locked up for the rest of their lives without ever having a chance to prove their innocence. Congress will be forfeiting one of the founding principles of the democratic tradition, and one of the most basic checks on executive power.

Congress gives the president the power to lock up almost anyone he thinks is a terror threat.

Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman states in the L.A. Times, “The compromise legislation….authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.”

Read “The White House Warden” at the Los Angeles Times

More coverage:

Bush Given Authority To Sexually Torture American Children (Prison Planet)

Legal Residents’ Rights Curbed in Detainee Bill (Boston Globe)

Filed under: Blog, Evidence, In the News, Must Read, Constitutional Crisis, Facts: Breaking the Law

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