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| Panel overturns judge's decision on Taliban suspect |
| 2002-07-13 |
| A court must reconsider an order allowing an American-born Taliban to meet with his lawyers because the judge did not adequately consider the government's position that the prisoner is an enemy combatant, an appeals court ruled yesterday. A three-judge panel of the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned US District Judge Robert G. Doumar's ruling that Yaser Esam Hamdi could meet privately with attorneys from the federal public defender's office. Hamdi, 21, was captured in Afghanistan in November after a prison uprising by Taliban and Al Qaeda members. He was held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until it was discovered that he was born in Louisiana to Saudi Arabian parents. He was moved to the jail at the Norfolk Naval Base in April, where he has been held incommunicado as an enemy combatant. The appeals court rejected the public defender's argument that Hamdi, as a US citizen, had a constitutional right to legal representation. Doumar's order ''was not merely a garden-variety appointment of counsel in an ordinary criminal case,'' Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote. He didn't have a lawyer with him when he was shooting at Americans at Qala-i-Jangi. And a mere ten years ago, I don't recall any great public concern over the few Iraqi-Americans who were drafted by Sammy and sent to Kuwait with the rest of the cannon fodder. We won't even mention what occasionally happened to allied nationals who were swept up by the draft for the Wehrmacht. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |