[Marxism] The Right to Habeas Corpus and Defense of Civil Liberties versus the Washington Post

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

"On the one hand—on the other hand" expresses the fighting with one 
hand attitude of contemporary liberalism. Last month, the Washington 
Post printed a long-researched article about secret air flights by 
military and CIA planes. It has roiled European government ever since 
then, for the article suggests that the CIA rendered U.S. military 
prisoners to hidden CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere and 
that some European governments were involved.

It follows that in light of the known events of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, 
Bagrahm and elsewhere, that secret interrogations and forms of torture 
could be legitimately suspected. Then the same newspaper turns around 
and applauds a farcical trial, where there is no evidence and no 
witnesses except a confession extracted under conditions that have no 
legitimate standard in any court of law in the world, including the 
United States.

Last week NPR's Daniel Schorr made similar remarks, additionally 
covering for the trial by hinting [said without detectable sarcasm] 
that there were presumably national security reasons for the failure to 
produce secret evidence against Abu Ali that the government claimed it 
had.

That evidence was undoubtedly on the level of the WMD evidence, for it 
they had any legitimate evidence at all, one would think that they 
would present at least a glimpse of it. But there is no surprise here. 
Last week, journalist Susan Taylor Martin reported on her attempt to 
get the government to release its evidence that Gen. Janis Karpinski 
was guilty of shoplifting or of covering up an arrest or detention at a 
military post exchange.

In published remarks in May, Karpinski said: "They had nothing about 
Abu Ghraib to use against me. So they pull this flaky allegation out 
and use it to demote me? To save face? To mislead the American public 
yet again?"

Reporter Martin got the runaround for six months. Last week, she 
received this from the Air Force: "We can neither confirm nor deny the 
existence of a record."

If the government stonewalls on reporting an argument over a bottle of 
moisturizer, it is a thousand times more likely that they are not 
hiding evidence in the Abu Ali case, but the absence of evidence.

Brian Shannon
_____________

Washington Post, letters to the editor
Questions About a Conviction
Saturday, December 3, 2005

Your editorial on the conviction of Virginia native and U.S. citizen 
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali for allegedly plotting to kill President Bush 
["Belated Justice for a Terrorist," Nov. 28] lauds the result as "a 
conviction in a major case following the regular rules" with only 
"certain peculiarities."

While bringing terrorists to justice fairly within the criminal justice 
system is certainly a laudable goal, this is hardly the case to make 
that point. It involves an American citizen held without charges by 
Saudi Arabian authorities with U.S. complicity for more than a year and 
a half, reluctantly brought to this country only when a federal judge 
demanded that the government reveal the nature of its contacts with the 
Saudi authorities regarding his detention, and convicted almost 
entirely on the basis of a confession obtained while Abu Ali was in 
Saudi custody and tortured.

The only person with whom Abu Ali allegedly discussed the alleged plot 
to kill the president was himself subsequently killed by the Saudis. 
While the district court rejected Abu Ali's allegations of torture, 
despite their corroboration by two physicians who examined him, nothing 
about this case followed the regular rules. Had the court done so, the 
case would have been thrown out at the threshold.

-- David Cole, Washington

The writer, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, 
represented the Abu Ali family in challenging his detention in Saudi 
Arabia.

=======================

As a lawyer and writer who has followed and written about the 
prosecution of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, I take strong exception to your 
editorial's conclusion that Abu Ali was tried by the "rules" and 
suffered no deprivation of his civil liberties at the hands of the U.S. 
government.

Judge Gerald Bruce Lee's opinion ruling the confessions of Abu Ali 
admissible, which the editorial cited, disclosed disturbing facts about 
the "cooperation" between Saudi Arabia and U.S. prosecutors and FBI 
agents that may have been undertaken for the very purpose of arguing 
successfully before Judge Lee that the Saudis were doing the 
"detaining" and the "interrogating," not U.S. law enforcement.

Abu Ali was denied access to an attorney and the right to a speedy 
trial. The United States contended that he was never a suspect, so he 
had no constitutional rights. He went from not being a suspect to being 
a defendant when it appeared that a D.C. federal judge was not going to 
buy the government's argument that Abu Ali was too dangerous to be 
returned to the United States.

Facing a possible adverse court decision, federal prosecutors did with 
Abu Ali what they did with Jose Padilla when a Supreme Court deadline 
was looming -- they produced him in court, indicted him on charges that 
have changed over time and then declared that they had generously 
ensured him his day in court. The only good thing to say about Abu 
Ali's trial is that it took place in public (most of it). But if the 
government had its way, Abu Ali would still be sitting in a Saudi jail 
or perhaps even removed to one of those clandestine CIA prisons 
described by The Post's Dana Priest.

-- Elaine Cassel, Alexandria

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