 WASHINGTON - A Washington appeals court blocked Friday the US militaryÂ’s plan to turn a US citizen arrested in Baghdad over to Iraqi authorities to be tried on terror charges. In a ruling that was the most recent setback to US government war-on-terror detainee policy, the district appeals court affirmed a lower court decision that Shawqi Ahmad Omar, born in Kuwait and a US citizen by marriage, is protected by the US constitution from unlawful imprisonment.
| Gullible woman marries Omar, Omar tells her he's going out to get milk from his cousin's store, and next thing you know he's in Baghdad. She still loves him, of course. |
It accepted that Omar has the right to challenge being held by the military without charges and being summarily handed over to a foreign court without due process.
| Other US detainees in Iraq, including deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, previously petitioned US courts to block their transfer to Iraqi hands, but none with success. |
US-led multinational forces in Iraq seized Omar, who has dual US and Jordanian citizenship, in 2004 in Baghdad on the belief that he was part of the network of the late Iraq Al Qaeda chief Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, according to court documents. After a military hearing he was declared an “enemy combatant” in the war on terror, he was held at various detention facilities in Iraq without ever being formally charged or convicted, the documents said.
| Hmmm: captured in Iraq in a battlefield environment. If we consider him an 'enemy combatant', we can hold him til the war is over or turn him over to the Iraqis. If we instead consider him an American, the proper charge is 'treason'. |
In August 2005 US forces decided to hand Omar over to Iraqi authorities to be tried in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq.
In reaction Omar’s wife and son petitioned the US District Court in Washington for his freedom by in a writ of habeas corpus, saying his detention violated Omar’s rights under the US constitution, and that turning him over would amount to an “illegal extradition.” They also alleged that in Iraqi hands he faced the risk of torture.
If the military would not release him, they added, Omar should be brought into a US court where they should demonstrate why he should remain in detention.
After the lower district court blocked OmarÂ’s transfer, the government appealed the ruling, arguing the lower court had no jurisdiction in the case and that in fact by freeing him in Iraq his petition for release would be satisfied.
| He can buy a plane ticket home, assuming he lives that long. |
But in a decision experts said was likely to be challenged to the Supreme Court, the appeals court Friday ruled that the lower court had been correct. “Omar has not been charged with a crime related to the allegation now lodged against him, much less convicted of one,” the court said. It noted that Omar’s challenge was not to have his ultimate guilt or innocence declared, but to “test the lawfulness of his extrajudicial detention in Iraq, where he has remained in the control of US forces for over two years without legal process.”
| All military prisoners of war are held that way. |
Other US detainees in Iraq, including deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, previously petitioned US courts to block their transfer to Iraqi hands, but none with success.
But the Washington appeals court is now considering the case of another US citizen, Mohamed Munaf, who was convicted and sentenced to death by an Iraqi court for kidnapping three Romanian journalists in Baghdad in 2005.
| Convicted by the Iraqis? Let them carry out their sentence. Mind the drop tables. |
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