Habeas Corpus For Guantanamo Terrorists
Thanks to our liberal Supreme Court Justices, Guantanamo terrorists can now use habeas corpus to challenge the legality of their detention in federal court!
Here’s what Justice Kennedy had to say:
“The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for a five-member majority clearly impatient that some prisoners have been held for six years without a hearing.
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As a result of the ruling, the approximately 270 detainees remaining at Guantanamo and their lawyers will be able to challenge their detentions before civilian judges, potentially forcing the government to present evidence against them and giving them the chance to call their own witnesses.
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The cases decided yesterday were brought on behalf of 37 foreigners at Guantanamo Bay. All were captured on foreign soil and have been designated enemy combatants. They have proclaimed their innocence — some say they were turned over to coalition forces for money — and for years have asked federal courts for a chance to challenge their captivity.
This is unbelievable! These islamos are using our own laws against us, and those liberal Supreme Court Justices are helping them do it!
June 17th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
The razor thin margin in favor of human rights vs. dictatorship shows why it it necessary to elect Obama.
It must have been some time after I left the United States Army that America turned from the home of the brave to the land of cowards, willing to give up ancient rights paid for with the blood of their betters, because some politician says we should be afraid of the fact that freedom is not the same as safety.
The alternative to habeas corpus rights for every prisoner of the Unted States would be givng our go0vernment the right to captrue impriosn and torture
June 17th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Oops.
Don’t know how that happened. To continue:
The alternative to habeas corpus rights for every prisoner of the United States would be giving our government the right to capture, imprison and torture ANYONE WHO IS NOT AN AMERICAN CITIZEN.
They have already done that. Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was imprisoned, and sent secretly to Syria, where he was tortured for months, even though he was innocent. Who knows how many others have suffered the same fate?
If the United States claims that they can hold a prisoner because he is an “enemy combatant,” then the minimum burden of proof must be to show the circumstances of his capture and what the evidence is against him. This can only take place in an impartial setting.
We afford the most vile criminals due process, and it is the strength of our system.
The people who fought for the liberty we enjoy were not “safe.” Many died in the process. We would dishonor those brave men and women by cringing in fear and begging treasonous politicians to take away human rights if only it will make us safe.
It won’t make us safe. The rule of law, and that means the same law for everyone, is all that stands between us and being Stalin’s Soviet Union. Anyone who says that we should be afraid to give habeas corpus rights to Gitmo prisoners might as well join al Qaeda, because he is spreading their propaganda for them.
I will happily take my chances with a known enemy having his day in court, over a politician selling out liberty and claiming to be on my side when he is not.
I hate cowards, and I will defend the Constitution to my last breath. Thank you, Supreme Court.
June 18th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
As a vet myself, I was with you most of the way. The disconnect comes from the fact that you failed to explain how electing Obama ties into all that was written after that. I can only conclude that your agenda is not so much about preserving liberty, but, rather, advancing, in a slick and roundabout fashion, the cause of getting Obama elected. Sorry, but the guy has done nothing to inspire any confidence in me, and the platitude of “Change” is meaningless. Not all change is good (not that maintaining the status quo is any better). Obama is a neophyte and an unknown quantity. Nice try, though.
June 21st, 2008 at 8:20 am
Gosh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that they were captured on battlefields would explain something, ya think? And the sacred mantra of “stare decises” (or whatever it is)prayed and played by the donks so much during the Roberts and Alito hearings could be something else, too?
And as for Hussein, you, Mr. & Mrs. Citizen, have already given up your right to land ownership and protection from religious persecution if you happen to be a Christian. Of course, those don’t count because they’ve only been used against citizens. Which ones of your “inalienable rights” specified in the Constitution will Hussein go after next, all in the name of “change we can believe in”?
Yeh, the SCOTUS did us a real service by rewriting law, didn’t they? Now, if only we could get every other country, especially the Muslim ones, to recognize that war combatants and those captured on battlefields (or anywhere else) have the right not to be beheaded in front of cameras, maybe we could make some sense out of all this.
June 21st, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Many of the people put in Gitmo were not from a battlefield. They were hunted by intelligence or other means and captured. A “battlefield” is what? Its whatever the US deems it is. Sometimes it seems it is anywhere that isn’t inside the US.
These people are not animals. They have rights and a right to AT LEAST be looked at objectively by someone. Sure, many of them are horrible terrorists and deserve to bet there. But how about the many that are there mistakely, that we would never know it because their cases are never reviewed. THAT is a horrible thing to happen.