RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.uncoverage.net/2010/01/here-come-645-more-terrorists/

American trials for 645 more?

One week ago, the Obama administration quietly pulled another one of its “Friday night specials.”   The news didn’t “break” till Saturday in the New York Times and a few other places, but it didn’t matter.  Noone noticed.  Everyone was focused on what Scott Brown and Martha Coakley were saying and doing in the U. S. Senate race in  Massachusetts. 

While the nation was busy looking the “other way,” the U.S. military gave the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) a list of  names of 645 detainees being held at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan.   

The New York Times reported the names were released last Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request made by the ACLU last fall.  The ACLU immediately published the redacted list of detainees’ names on its website. 

“Releasing the names of those held at Bagram is an important step toward transparency and accountability at the secretive Bagram prison, but it is just a first step,” Melissa Goodman, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U., said in a statement. 

“Full transparency and accountability about Bagram requires disclosing how long these people have been imprisoned, where they are from and whether they were captured far from any battlefield or in other countries far from Afghanistan,” she said. 

The release of detainees names follows yet another little-publicized event earlier in the month:  On January 7, a 3-judge appellate panel in New York heard arguments in the first case involving 3 Bagram detainees who are represented by the International Justice Network (IJN).   IJN attorneys say that if Guantanamo Bay detainees have been given rights of habeus corpus, then detainees at any other American overseas prison should also have those rights. 

Years of  American policy keeping secret the locations, names, conditions and allegations about terrorists arrested  and held in foreign jails have now been unraveled.  Barack Obama’s promise to “close” the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba was the first step.   Granting releases to some of the “Gitmo” prisoners back to Yemen or Saudi Arabia was the next troubling phase.  Until this month, to its credit, the Obama administration had maintained a legal stance similar to the Bush administration–that detainees in all other American prisons abroad were not entitled to full legal rights and trials under the American justice system.  Now, everybody anywhere may get “rights.” 

Now begins the ”unofficial” Obama administration ”stimulus” project for liberal defense attorneys who will use the list of Bagram detainee names to search worldwide for “victims” of American ”oppression” or “torture”.   Left-leaning social agencies such as ACLU and IJN are able now to  begin petitioning in behalf of the “rights” of a huge new group of detained terrorists and/or their families, wherever they may be.  There are other off-shore prisons besides Bagram.  ”Show trials” can’t be far off—trials and hearings  to decry the Bush administration policies, to make allegations of torture, to totally gum up the American legal system with court-appointed attorneys for years, who will question why terrorists held as enemy combatants should now have full legal rights U.S. citizens. 

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made the controversial decision late last year to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City’s federal court system.  Law enforcement costs, just to maintain security in New York city in and around the courthouse, are estimated at more than $100 million.  Mohammed’s proceedings may take YEARS. 

If we need an example of the shenanigans to come, a suspect considered “the female Al Qaida” is now on trial in Manhattan, in the same courthouse where KSM’s trial is scheduled.   Aifia Sadiqqui, is accused of wearing a suicide vest, and threatening to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan with a high-powered rifle.   Prosecutors couldn’t even get through jury selection with all of Sadiqqui’s pranks: She demanded genetic testing for all potential jurors to make sure not to have any “Zionist Jews” on the jury: 

New York Daily News: 

Prospective jurors weren’t present for that outburst, but they were in the courtroom to hear her say, “I’m boycotting the trial…there are too many injustices.”  At another point, Siddiqui repeatedly refused to talk to her own lawyers, saying she didn’t trust them.  “I don’t trust you either,” she told Berman.  She even tried to toss a handwritten note to prosecutors requesting time each day to pray. 

So imagine this case multiplied by hundreds, if not thousands, because it is unknown how many other overseas prisons there are, or how many detainees there are in each of them.   

Meanwhile, the Obama administration stubbornly keeps releasing known terrorists out of Guantanamo Bay and sending them back to various hotbeds of terrorism, Yemen, Algeria and Saudi Arabia.   We now know that many of those released return immediately to “jihad” plots against this country. The “underwear” bomber who tried to blow up an American plane over Detroit was trained in Yemen by former Gitmo prisoners. 

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has a critical conflict of interest in the terrorism detainees:  his former law firm is populated with leftist radicals who  represent 17 of the Guantanamo detainees, many of them Yemenis.  (see Michell Malkin on the subject HERE )  That alone should have prevented him from being confirmed by the Senate.  This conflict must be addressed by the Senate now, before he makes more decisions on detainees. 

In light of the expense and danger to Americans based on these terrorist-friendly moves by  AG Eric Holder, enabled by the President, there should be an immediate review by the appropriate Senate committees once the new senator from Massachusetts is seated.   

“Friends of the court” briefs can be filed in any cases now pending to grant habeus corpus to current detainees.  These “amicus” briefs can serve to slow the legal process until the Senate can act to stop this  un-American, frightening behavior by the U.S. Attorney General.