From The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime!
Here’s what some
experts have said about the Military Commissions Act:
Jonathan
Turley, Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School: “The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely
hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put
people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence
people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam
shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions.”Senator
Patrick Leahy, Vermont: “What
they”re saying is that if you”re an alien, even if you”re in the United States
legally, a legal alien, may have been here ten years, fifteen years, twenty
years legally, if a determination is made by anybody in the executive that
you may be a threat, they can hold you indefinitely, they could put you in
Guantanamo, not bring any charges, not allow you to have a lawyer, not allow
you to ever question what they”ve done, even in cases, as they now acknowledge,
where they have large numbers of people in Guantanamo who are there by
mistake”” [emphasis added]Center for
Constitutional Rights: “Once in U.S. custody,
the law allows detainees to be subjected to stress positions, temperature
extremes, sleep deprivation, and possibly waterboarding. It also defines sexual
violence crimes so narrowly that some of the outrages of Abu Ghraib, such as
forced nudity, would not be punishable, and defines rape and sexual abuse in a
manner that is inconsistent with international law, turning back the clock on
the hard-fought victories of survivors of sexual violence.”
Why
is the MCA being characterized this way? Let’s look at what the law
says:
-
Creates a new
legal category of prisoner; “unlawful enemy combatant”; defines the term unlawful
enemy combatant as “a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has
purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States” OR
a person whom a combatant status review tribunal established by the president
or Secretary of Defense has decided is an unlawful enemy combatant. [Section
3, Military Commissions; Subchapter I, General Provisions; 948a, Definitions]
As
Bill Goodman of the Center for Constitutional Rights points out, the terms
“hostilities” and “material support” are so vague that the President could
easily apply the label of enemy combatant to U.S. citizens as well as
non-citizens. For instance, Goodman says, a peaceful group that challenges
Bush’s wars, or someone who donates to a charity in Afghanistan, unaware that
charity has been determined by the U.S. government to have connections to
terrorists, could find themselves declared enemy combatants.
Once someone has
been defined as an unlawful enemy combatant, what happens next?
-
That person
can be detained indefinitely without charge, and without the right to
challenge their detention. Habeas
corpus-the right to challenge one’s imprisonment-has its origins in the Magna
Carta of 1215. But the Military Commissions Act clearly eliminates these
800-year-old rights: “No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to
hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on
behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the
United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is
awaiting such determination.” [SECTION 7 “Habeas
Corpus Matters,” e (1)]
-
That person
is explicitly not protected by Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which outlaws violence, cruelty, and torture as
well as humiliating and degrading treatment. “No
alien unlawful enemy combatant subject to trial by military commission under
this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights.” [Section
3, “Military Commissions”; Subchapter I, 948b]
-
Evidence
obtained through coercion can be used against that person [Section 3, Military Commissions;
Subchapter III, Pretrial Procedures, 948r]
“A statement of the accused that is otherwise admissible shall
not be excluded from trial by military commission on grounds of alleged
coercion or compulsory self-incrimination so long as the evidence complies with
the provisions of section 948r of this title.”
[Section 3, Subchapter III, 949a.]
-
Hearsay
evidence-second-hand statements made by those not present during legal
proceedings-can be used against that person. [Section 3,
Military Commissions, Subchapter III, 949a]
-
That
person can be denied opportunity to confront key evidence against him if a
military judge deems that evidence to be classified: “The military judge, upon motion of
trial counsel, shall authorize trial counsel, in the course of complying with
discovery obligations under this section, to protect from disclosure the
sources, methods, or activities by which the United States acquired evidence if
the military judge finds that the sources, methods, or activities by which the
United States acquired such evidence are classified.” [Section 3, Subchapter IV, 949d.]
-
President
George W. Bush is granted the power to interpret the Geneva Conventions, and what forms of treatment
constitute grave breaches
of these conventions.
“As provided by the Constitution and by this section, the
President has the authority for the United States to interpret the
meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions and to promulgate higher standards
and administrative regulations for violations of treaty obligations which are
not grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.” [Section 6, Article 3A]
Keep in mind, this is the same George W. Bush who is responsible
for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and U.S. deaths in a war he lied his
way into.
To see for yourself, click here to read
a PDF of the entire text of the Military Commissions Act.
“That
which you do not resist-or mobilize to
stop-you will learn, or be forced to accept.”