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| Court: U.S. Can Hold Citizens as Enemy Combatants | |||||
| 2003-01-08 | |||||
| A federal appeals court today ruled that the government has properly detained an American-born man captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan without an attorney and has legally declared him an enemy combatant. Ha ha, you loose. The 54-page ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, who is being held incognito at the Navy brig in Norfolk, has broad implications for the Bush administration's war on terror. The court ruled that as an American citizen, Hamdi had the right to a judicial review of his detention and his status as an enemy combatant. But because the Constitution affords the executive branch the responsibility to wage war, the courts must show great deference to the military in making such determinations.
"The constitutional allocation of war powers affords the President extraordinarily broad authority as Commander in Chief and compels courts to assume a deferential posture in reviewing exercises of this authority," said the opinion, written by Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III and judges William W. Wilkins and William B. Traxler Jr. "The Constitution does not specifically contemplate any role for courts in the conduct of war, or in foreign policy generally. Indeed . . . courts are ill-positioned to police the military's distinction between those in the arena of combat who should be detained and those who should not."
Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001. He was transferred to the Navy brig in Norfolk after telling U.S. investigators that he was born in Louisiana. But while he was in Norfolk, the military declined to allow Hamdi to speak with anyone because he was deemed an enemy combatant.
The appeals court today was specifically ruling on the sufficiency of a two-page declaration by a Defense Department official who said Hamdi was captured with a rifle with Taliban soldiers. Doumar ruled that the statement by a special adviser to the undersecretary of defense for policy was insufficient to detain an American citizen without a lawyer. But the appeals court ruled that it is enough to say that Hamdi was "captured and detained by American allied forces in a foreign theater of war during active hostilities and determined by the United States military to have been indeed allied with enemy forces."
The court noted the implications of its decision in a rare acknowledgment to the underlying facts of the case. "The events of September 11 have left their indelible mark," the judges wrote. "It is not wrong even in the dry annals of judicial opinion to mourn those who lost their lives that terrible day. Yet we speak in the end not from sorrow or anger, but from the conviction that separation of powers takes on special significance when the nation itself comes under attack... Judicial review does not disappear during wartime, but the review of battlefield captures in overseas conflicts is a highly deferential one."
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| Posted by:Steve |
| #4 Mrs. Malaprop is the copy editor. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-01-08 21:32:39 |
| #3 Sorry, I ran out of pixel correction fluid. |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-01-08 21:18:15 |
| #2 Doesn't the Washington Post have copy editors? Yeah, STEVE. ("Ha ha, you loose") ;) |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-01-08 17:12:30 |
| #1 Is Yaser Esam Hamdi really being held incognito?!?!? Do they have Groucho glasses on him - with the big nose, moustache and bushy eyebrows? Or is he possibly being held incommunicado??? That is, being held without access to friends, TV or newspapers? Personally, I'm guessing it's the latter. Doesn't the Washington Post have copy editors? Or do they just spend all their efforts writing slanted editorials? |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2003-01-08 15:01:48 |