In yet another attempt to enhance the atmosphere of fear in the United States and to strip away basic rights, the Bush administration has proposed a new “terror detainee” bill. The bill would imprison any U.S. citizens suspected of connections to organizations deemed “terrorist” by the government. These citizens would indefinitely be barred from having access to civilian courts.
An open hearing to discuss the proposed bill before the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Judiciary
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Using fear is not a new strategy
This new legislation is not a new strategy by the Bush administration. In 2001, Bush quickly signed the Patriot Act after it overwhelmingly passed through both houses of Congress. The Patriot Act dramatically expanded the authority of U.S. law enforcement to fight “terrorist acts” in the United States and abroad. It has also been used to detect and prosecute other alleged potential crimes. It defined these acts so broadly that many otherwise legal actions are now dubbed criminal or potentially criminal. The Patriot Act was renewed in 2006, again with overwhelming approval by Congress, including both Democrats and Republicans.
“That’s the big question … the definition of who can be detained,” said Martin Lederman, a law professor at Georgetown University. The term “terrorist” is selectively defined by the U.S. government to include organizations and countries that defy U.S. imperialist hegemony. The government never applies such terms to its own actions against civilian populations in Iraq or to the bombing of civilian targets in Lebanon by its client-regime in Israel.
The “terror detainee” bill describes in exceedingly broad strokes who can be detained if it becomes law. It also allows the government to bar defendants from being present at their own trials. The bill also could open the way for the submission of testimony acquired by coercion or torture. Unlike a civilian trial, this bill would ignore common rights such as barring hearsay evidence, guaranteeing “speedy trials,” and granting a defendant access to evidence.
“If you allow statements obtained through coercion and you allow hearsay, then you have invited all sorts of unreliable information in,” said Muneer Ahmad, professor at American University’s Washington School of Law, who serves as civilian counsel for Guantánamo detainee Omar Ahmed Khadr.
Provisions like this proposed bill are not created to increase the country’s security but to strip rights away from workers, poison the atmosphere with fear and suspicion, and provide a green-light for the continued U.S. aggression against the people in the Middle East.
Guantánamo, the Liberty City 7 and Abdel Jabbar Hamdan
People can see the intent of these laws in the current practices of the government. Bush submitted the “terror detainee” bill in response to the Supreme Court’s decision on June 29, which concluded the Pentagon could not prosecute military detainees using secret tribunals. These secret trials, which began after Sept. 11, 2001, stand in violation to obligations outlined for prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
Since Sept. 11, there have been numeorus roundups and detentions of immigrants and persons suspected of ties to terrorism. Most people rounded up have been Arab or Muslim.
The U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay has held more than 500 “enemy combatants,” who the government claims are al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, for five years. The U.S. Guantánamo Bay facility is classified as a center for torture and human rights violations by the United Nations.
In Miami, the case of the Liberty City 7 highlights the racism behind the government’s use of “anti-terror” laws. In a
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And in Los Angeles, Abdel Jabbar Hamdan, a fundraiser for the Holy Land Foundation and local Arab leader, spent over two years in a high-security Homeland Security detention center on Terminal Island for overstaying his student visa. The government justified Hamdan’s detention by accusing him of supporting “terrorism” through his fundraising efforts for schools and hospitals in occupied Palestine. Like the vast majority of “terrorism”-related detainees, criminal charges were never brought against him.
After much legal and community-based struggle, Hamdan was just released last week. But the government now wants to deport him despite the fact that he has lived here for more than 27 years. Hamdan also has six U.S.-born children.
The new proposed bill is an attempted extension of these repressive, racist U.S. government policies that have terrorized thousands of innocent people. These policies are themselves extensions of the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and its criminal support for the Israeli war on Lebanon and Palestine.
These foreign and domestic policies demonstrate clearly that the capitalist class and their managers in Washington will go to any extreme to maintain their hold on power and facilitate the maximum extraction of profit. What the ruling class doesn’t realize is that peddling fear and increasing repression will incite an inevitable response from working people. That response should ultimately seek to construct a world based on solidarity and peace, and not wars for profit, state repression, and fear mongering.
