Tag: detention

Through utilisation of the federal No-Fly list, authorities are increasingly subjecting individuals to de facto exile.

On January 2, 2005, Rahinah Ibrahim, a PhD student in Construction Management and Engineering at Stanford University, arrived at San Francisco International Airport to board a scheduled international flight en route to Malaysia. Ibrahim was slated to attend a Stanford-sponsored conference in the country to present findings from her doctoral research; a trip she was taking despite being wheelchair-bound due to complications from a recent hysterectomy.

However instead of boarding her flight, Ibrahim found herself in handcuffs – detained by the San Francisco Police Department before being searched and locked in a holding cell by TSA agents without explanation as to the reason for her arrest. After being interrogated for several hours by the FBI it was revealed that she had been placed – for reasons not revealed to her – on a No-Fly list which prevented her from routinely boarding her flight. Despite this Ibrahim was cleared by the agents of being a security risk, assured there would be no future problems, and allowed to board a flight for Malaysia the following day.

However upon attempting to return to the United States after her trip, Ibrahim found herself again detained and prevented from boarding her flight by local authorities who had received instructions from the US Consulate that she was to be barred from returning home.

It has now been eight years and Ibrahim has still not been allowed to return to the United States, banished based on secret evidence which she is unable to view let alone contest and trapped in a Kafkaesque legal limbo which has made her an effective exile from the country.

Update: I’ve bolded key passages in the bill below the fold to whet your appetites.

My Fellow Prisoners, High-Value Detainees, and Unprivileged Enemy Belligerents,

I would like to introduce to you the legislation that gets our accelerator stuck on the floor mat on the road to full tilt boogie, banana republic-style dictatorship, Senators John McCain’s and Joe Lieberman’s Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010.  

This proposed legislation manages not just to “twist” the Constiution, but a does the physically impossible inward-rotating armstand flying forward back double reverse three-and-a-half somersault pike with a synchronized hand-in-butt-tuck.  The essence of the bill aims to completely destroy the concept and practice of due process, shoot America in the face, and throw it straight off the cliff.

I suspect that this bill was written with indefinitely, and illegally detained Guantanamo prisoners in mind, i.e., to keep them from being prosecuted in civilian criminal courts, but the scope of the language goes well beyond those poor suffering bastards and explicitly includes YOU, my fellow high-value detainees.   Someone needs to take a flamethrower to this odious piece of garbage.

Any person suspected of being an “enemy belligerent,” explicitly including U.S. citizens, can be detained without Miranda warnings, interrogated, and be imprisoned indefinitely at the whim of interrogation groups, the FBI, CIA, DNI, Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, “appropriate committees of Congress,” and the President, with the President making any final calls in cases of dispute.  Any alien determined to be a “high-value detainee,” the law would explicitly prohibit Article III jurisdiction, that is, it would prohibit the judicial branch from any consideration of due process requirements.  As a bonus, the bill would also essentially usurp any local, state, and federal law enforcement for military purposes.  Thus the President trumps the judicial branch on due process for non-citizens in all circumstances.  However, during a time of war, the President trumps justice on due process for citizens, as well:  

SEC. 5. DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL OF UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY BELLIGERENTS. An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent under section 3(c)(2) in a manner which satisfies Article 5 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi

Enough is enough.  The NY Times reports that the Myanmar government has yet again extended Aung San Suu Kyi’s dentention:

Myanmar’s military government has renewed the detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

A government official said that Suu Kyi’s detention was officially extended Tuesday afternoon. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

It was not immediately clear if the extension was for six months or one year. The extension became official when an official drove to her house to inform her of it, he said.

Suu Kyi has been in detention continuously since May 2003, most of the time under house arrest.

She has been confined without trial for more than 12 of the past 18 years.

Just a quickie, because this seems like news to me.

From the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR):

“For the first time, the CIA has acknowledged that extensive records exist relating to its use of enforced disappearances and secret prisons,” said Curt Goering, AIUSA senior deputy executive director. “Given what we already know about documents written by Bush administration officials trying to justify torture and other human rights crimes, one does not need a fertile imagination to conclude that  the real reason for refusing to disclose these documents has more to do with avoiding disclosure of criminal activity than national security.“