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Paul Merrell

» The government has made an "absolute mockery" of Bradley Manning's right to... - 0 views

  • It’s appropriate that David Coombs’ longest motion of this trial yet, which argues for dismissal of all charges, details PFC Bradley Manning’s extraordinarily and illegally long pretrial confinement. The prosecution’s repeated and unjustifiable delays point “unmistakably to the conclusion that PFC Manning’s statutory and constitutional speedy trial rights have been trampled upon with impunity.”
  • “As of the date of this motion, PFC Manning has been in pretrial confinement for 845 days. Eight hundred forty-five days…. With trial scheduled to commence on 4 February 2013, PFC Manning will have spent a grand total of 983 days in pretrial confinement before even a single piece of evidence is offered against him. To put this amount of time into perspective, the Empire State Building could have been constructed almost two-and-a-half times over in the amount of time it will have taken to bring PFC Manning to trial.” The Rule for Court Martial (RCM) 707 affords 120 days from arrest to arraignment to constitute a speedy trial. However, Bradley was arraigned nearly two years after his arrest and will have been imprisoned for nearly 1,000 days if his court-martial begins as scheduled on February 4, 2013.
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    I've read the 117-page brief. This is an outrageous violation of our Constitution.
Paul Merrell

Show Us the Drone Memos - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • I BELIEVE that killing an American citizen without a trial is an extraordinary concept and deserves serious debate. I can’t imagine appointing someone to the federal bench, one level below the Supreme Court, without fully understanding that person’s views concerning the extrajudicial killing of American citizens.But President Obama is seeking to do just that. He has nominated David J. Barron, a Harvard law professor and a former acting assistant attorney general, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
  • I believe that all senators should have access to all of these opinions. Furthermore, the American people deserve to see redacted versions of these memos so that they can understand the Obama administration’s legal justification for this extraordinary exercise of executive power. The White House may invoke national security against disclosure, but legal arguments that affect the rights of every American should not have the privilege of secrecy.I agree with the A.C.L.U. that “no senator can meaningfully carry out his or her constitutional obligation to provide ‘advice and consent’ on this nomination to a lifetime position as a federal appellate judge without being able to read Mr. Barron’s most important and consequential legal writing.” The A.C.L.U. cites the fact that in modern history, a presidential order to kill an American citizen away from a battlefield is unprecedented.The Bill of Rights is clear. The Fifth Amendment provides that no one can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Sixth Amendment provides that “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury,” as well as the right to be informed of all charges and have access to legal counsel. These are fundamental rights that cannot be waived with a presidential pen.
  • In battle, combatants engaged in war against America get no due process and may lawfully be killed. But citizens not in a battlefield, however despicable, are guaranteed a trial by our Constitution.
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  • While he was an official in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Mr. Barron wrote at least two legal memos justifying the execution without a trial of an American citizen abroad. Now Mr. Obama is refusing to share that legal argument with the American people. On April 30, I wrote to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, urging him to delay this nomination, pending a court-ordered disclosure of the first memo I knew about. Since that letter, I have learned more. The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to all senators on May 6, noting that in the view of the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, “there are at least eleven OLC opinions on the targeted killing or drone program.” It has not been established whether Mr. Barron wrote all those memos, but we do know that his controversial classified opinions provided the president with a legal argument and justification to target an American citizen for execution without a trial by jury or due process.
  • No one argues that Americans who commit treason shouldn’t be punished. The maximum penalty for treason is death. But the Constitution specifies the process necessary to convict.Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story AdvertisementAnwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen who was subject to a kill order from Mr. Obama, and was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a missile fired from a drone. I don’t doubt that Mr. Awlaki committed treason and deserved the most severe punishment. Under our Constitution, he should have been tried — in absentia, if necessary — and allowed a legal defense. If he had been convicted and sentenced to death, then the execution of that sentence, whether by drone or by injection, would not have been an issue. Continue reading the main story 526 Comments But this new legal standard does not apply merely to a despicable human being who wanted to harm the United States. The Obama administration has established a legal justification that applies to every American citizen, whether in Yemen, Germany or Canada.
  • Defending the rights of all American citizens to a trial by jury is a core value of our Constitution. Those who would make exceptions for killing accused American citizens without trial should give thought to the times in our history when either prejudice or fear allowed us to forget due process. During World War I, our nation convicted and imprisoned Americans who voiced opposition to the war. During World War II, the government interned Japanese-Americans.The rule of law exists to protect those who are minorities by virtue of their skin color or their beliefs. That is why I am fighting this nomination. And I will do so until Mr. Barron frankly discusses his opinions on executing Americans without trial, and until the American people are able to participate in one of the most consequential debates in our history. Rand Paul is a Republican senator from Kentucky.
Paul Merrell

Prison Dispatches from the War on Terror: Gitmo Detainee's Life an "Endless Horror Movi... - 0 views

  • Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, a Yemeni national who has been detained at the American prison facility at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, weighs only 98 pounds. Never charged with a crime, al-Alwi, now 35 years old, is one of many detainees at the camp who have gone on a prolonged hunger strike. As described in a recent petition submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) by his lawyers, al-Alwi’s mental and physical state is seriously deteriorating after two years on hunger strike, and subsequent force-feeding.  Since commencing his strike in February 2013, al-Alwi alleges that he has been subjected to escalating physical and psychological abuse from guards, as well as increasingly brutal force-feeding procedures administered by medical personnel at the camp. Human rights organizations have described the force-feeding procedure employed at Guantánamo as torture, and the U.S. government has fought to keep video footage of the force-feeding of al-Alwi and other hunger-striking detainees from public view.
  • Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, a Yemeni national who has been detained at the American prison facility at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, weighs only 98 pounds. Never charged with a crime, al-Alwi, now 35 years old, is one of many detainees at the camp who have gone on a prolonged hunger strike. As described in a recent petition submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) by his lawyers, al-Alwi’s mental and physical state is seriously deteriorating after two years on hunger strike, and subsequent force-feeding.  Since commencing his strike in February 2013, al-Alwi alleges that he has been subjected to escalating physical and psychological abuse from guards, as well as increasingly brutal force-feeding procedures administered by medical personnel at the camp. Human rights organizations have described the force-feeding procedure employed at Guantánamo as torture, and the U.S. government has fought to keep video footage of the force-feeding of al-Alwi and other hunger-striking detainees from public view
  • Al-Alwi, who has described his strike as “a form of peaceful protest against injustice,” has said that he will not resume eating until there is some sort of legal resolution to his case. Prison officials have responded to his hunger strike by placing him in solitary confinement, denying him access to prescribed medical items and subjecting him to extreme temperatures in his cell. 
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  • According to the petition, al-Alwi’s nostril passages have now swelled shut due to the extra large tubes prison authorities have repeatedly forced down his nasal cavity during this feeding process. He also maintains that the force-feeding sessions have led to heavy vomiting and daily blood loss. Shackled to a chair for hours each day during the force-feeding sessions, al-Alwi now suffers severe back pain and other debilitating physical injuries. In his petition, al-Alwi describes his life in Guantánamo as “an endless horror story.” In April 2013, a delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross conducted a visit to Guantánamo to meet with detainees and assess conditions there. On the day immediately following their departure, armed guards raided a cellblock housing al-Alwi and several other hunger-striking detainees while they prepared for communal prayers.
  • The complaint further alleges that prisoners were physically assaulted by guards during this raid, some of whom fired rubber-coated steel bullets at them. Al-Alwi was among those wounded, with bullets hitting him in his thigh, elbow and back as he tried to flee from guards firing at him; those shots were allegedly fired from the other side of a chain-link fence. Al-Alwi says that he has never received adequate medical treatment for these wounds; he was handcuffed and left to bleed for 20 minutes by guards before a doctor arrived. A few of his wounds were rubbed with anti-infection cream while the remainder have remained wholly untreated to this day. As a result, al-Alwi says that he suffers chronic and debilitating pain and swelling from these injuries.
  • The circumstances leading to al-Alwi’s detention at Guantánamo are obscure. One of hundreds of young Arab men who were captured by Pakistani bounty hunters following the Sept. 11 attacks, al-Alwi was not a known or wanted terrorist, but was nonetheless turned over to U.S. troops by locals in Pakistan for a cash reward later that year. On Jan. 16, 2002, he arrived at Guantánamo Bay where he has remained ever since. A 2006 report by Amnesty International found that cash bounties offered for turning over “terrorists” to U.S. forces had effectively created a lucrative cash market for capturing young Arab men in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Fliers distributed by the U.S. government in the region offered “millions of dollars” in exchange for turning over purported Al-Qaeda and Taliban members, promising those who were able to render suspects to American custody “enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life.”
  • Al-Alwi says that American interrogators tortured him until he made false confessions about his involvement in terrorism. Despite having now spent over a decade in custody, with no foreseeable prospect of release, he has not been charged with any crime. Describing his brutal treatment by riot guards who come to restrain him for force-feedings, al-Alwi told his lawyers in the petition:  “I weigh less than 100 pounds. I wear braces on both ankles, and both wrists, and one around my lower back. I am five foot five … and they claim that I am ‘resisting’ … How can I possibly resist anyone, let alone these men?”
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    "... in the land of the free and the home of the brave" forget about the right to a speedy trial.
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