Civil Liberties, Death Penalty, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Torture, Truth to Power
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Law and Disorder Update
Co-hosts Michael Ratner and Heidi Boghosian discuss recent key votes in Congress on the Iraq war, warrant-less electronic surveillance and lethal injection.
Enemy Combatant Doctrine
In a recent essay A System of Wholesale Denial of Rights published in the Monthly Review, Research Professor of Law, Michael Tigar describes how the term enemy combatant was created through the rulings in the anti-terrorist case Padilla v. Rumsfeld and the implications for civil liberties and human rights in the United States. Implications that support a system whereby the president can lock up anyone he chooses and never have to explain why to a court.
The Bush Administration has taken the language from those in favor of slavery and oppression of Native Americans. Instead of prisoner, instead defendant, instead of person they create a category of enemy combatant. (Non-People – Invoking the characterization of someone not entitled to claim justice.) Tigar says this is a tactic of repressive governments. Tigar says, the term enemy combatant doesn’t exist in the Constitution or within International Law, therefore enemy combatants have no rights, are denied access to courts and fall under military regime.
Michael Tigar in his article points out the historic parallels such as the Dred Scott case, Japanese internment and the Cherokee Nation. Frederick Douglas and several anti-slavery people thought that it would be possible to make an argument that slavery so violated the norms of the constitution that it had to be illegal everywhere. The Cherokee Nation, says Tigar was classified as “subject people.” Subject People is not found in Article 3 in the Constitution. Therefore, “subject people” are not entitled to sue in federal courts.
Michael Tigar is a Research Professor of Law at Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, D.C., where he teaches Federal Courts, International Human Rights, and Criminal Law. Tigar argued seven cases in front of the US Supreme court, he’s represented many controversial clients since then such as Angela Davis, Terry Nichols, Lynne Stewart and members of the Chicago Seven. He is the author of the recent book, Thinking About Terrorism: The Threat To Civil Liberties in a Time Of National Emergency.
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40th Anniversary of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna Murder
We mark the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara’s murder. He was captured in Bolivia during a military operation supported by the CIA and the U.S. Army Special Forces. Guevara was summarily executed by the Bolivian Army in the town of La Higuera near Vallegrande on October 9, 1967.
Guest – author and professor John Tito Gerassi, about Che Guevara’s influence. Gerassi describes how he was poisoned by the CIA while dining with Fidel Castro and about his guerilla training with Che.
Gerassi currently teaches at Queens College of the City University of New York. Gerassi, born in France in 1931, is the author many books including the Great Fear in Latin America and The Premature Antifascists, the only authorized biography of Jean Paul Sarte.
Che photos by redredpei – flickr
Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, Uncategorized
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(CCR) attorneys and co-counsel submitted a ground-breaking brief to the Supreme Court in the case that will determine whether detainees at Guantánamo possess the fundamental constitutional rights to due process and habeas corpus.
“These men have been held unlawfully in abusive conditions while the courts and Congress debate whether they should have any rights,” said CCR President Michael Ratner. ” Read more.
Co-hosts Michael Ratner and Michael Smith
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Guantanamo Bay Detainees Transfers and Abuse
The US Supreme Court said it would not prevent Ahmed Bel Bacha, an Algerian army veteran detained at Guantanamo Bay from being transferred to his home country. Bel Bacha, who has been held at Guantanamo for five years, had argued he would be tortured if turned over to Algerian officials. He is one of nearly 20 Guantanamo detainees who say they will face abuse if sent back to their country. Human Rights Watch article.
Recently, Isa Al Murbati was returned home after six months in Guantanamo Bay’s Camp Six. He was kept under the most cruel conditions of the prison, they include communication lock downs and sleep deprivation.
Guest – Emi Maclean, staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
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Flying While Muslim
Lyra Porras Garzon is a documentary filmmaker and creator of the recent film Flying While Muslim. This film explores the personal stories and debates surrounding racial profiling post 9/11 in the United States. As Lyra researched the many personal stories, she unearthed countless reports of racial profiling from detainment in airports to illegal detention of Muslims, Arabs and even South Asians. This, along with the imprisonment of those individuals without access to lawyers or the right to habeas corpus.
Guest – Lyra Porras Garzon
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Watch trailor for Flying While Muslim below:
Human Rights, Prison Industry, Torture, Truth to Power
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Children In Conflict With The Law: The U.S. Leads The World In Sentencing Children To Life Without Parole.
There are more than 2000 child offenders serving life without parole sentences in U.S. prisons for crimes committed before they reached the age of 18. The United States is one of few countries in the world that permit children to serve a life sentence without parole. Forty-two states currently have laws allowing children to receive life without parole sentences. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by every country in the world except the United States and Somalia, forbids this practice, and at least 132 countries have rejected the sentence altogether.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have published a 130 page report on this topic called The Rest of Their Lives (PDF). The statistics are staggering and includes four juvenile offenders in South Africa, one in Tanzania and five in Israel. It is based on self-reported cases found in these countries’ reports to the U.N. International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). While many of the child offenders are now adults, 16 percent were between 13 and 15 years old at the time they committed their crimes. An estimated 59 percent were sentenced to life without parole for their first-ever criminal conviction.
Alison Parker historically references where these laws came from. In the United Kingdom the sentence was known as “Detention During Her Majesty’s Pleasure”, the only sentence available to the courts for a person convicted of murder who was aged over 10 but under 18 at the time of the offence.
Guest – Alison Parker, Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch. Alison says she is among many helping to change the legislation that incarcerate children permanently without rehabilitative options.
Guest – David Berger, attorney with O’Melveny & Myers. David is a former researcher for the Amnesty International report.
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Bernadine Dohrn
Bernadine Dohrn joins Law and Disorder to discuss juvenile justice and the development of Draconian laws for children in conflict with the law. Bernadine is a clinical professor at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University in Chicago. Bernadine is also the former leader of the Weathermen. She now serves on the board of numerous human rights committees and teaches comparative law. Since 2002, she has served as a Visiting Law Faculty at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Mohammed Salah Sentenced to 21 Months
Here on Law and Disorder we’ve followed the pivotal moments in the Mohammed Salah case. Earlier this year, Salah was cleared of terrorism charges but recently convicted of lying about his ties to the Palestinian group Hamas. He faces nearly two years in prison. The sentence for a minor charge of obstruction of justice comes as a major setback for prosecutors who have spent a decade investigating charges that could have put Salah behind bars for life.
Guest – Michael Deutsch, Mohammed Salah’s attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago.
David Cole – The Grand Inquisitors
In his latest article in the New York Review of Books, David Cole, professor of law at Georgetown University reviews several books including, John Ashcroft’s Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice, General Ashcroft: Attorney at War by Nancy V. Baker and It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush, by Joe Conason and also Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror by Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr. and Aziz Z. Huq.
These publications create an outline of how former Attorney General John Ashcroft helped create a platform that allowed the Bush administration to torture, allow coerced confessions and hold defendants indefinitely without trial.
Guest – Georgetown Law Professor David Cole
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Law and Disorder Series: Lawyers You’ll Like – Peter Weiss, Vice President of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Peter Weiss is Vice-President, former President, of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms and its US affiliate, the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy; Vice-President, Federation Internationale des ligues des Droits de l’Homme; and Vice-President, Center for Constitutional Rights. Mr. Weiss is a graduate of Yale Law School and has lectured and written widely on the international law of war and peace, nuclear weapons and human rights. He was the principal author of the draft brief on the illegality of threat or use of nuclear weapons used by many countries in making written submissions to the International Court of Justice in the 1996 nuclear weapons advisory opinion, and served as counsel to Malaysia at the hearings.
He has published several articles on the ICJ opinion, including in the fall 1997 issue of Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems. Mr. Weiss is also a leading human rights lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, and litigated the seminal case establishing the right of victims of torture to sue their torturers in US courts (Filartiga v. Pena-Irala). Since his retirement in 1996 from Weiss Dawid Fross Zelnick & Lehrman, a leading trademark firm, he has been Senior Intellectual Property Counsel to The Chanel Company Limited. He is also a founder and former President of the American Committee on Africa and former Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. He has also long been an activist for peace in the Middle East and is currently a member of the Arab-Jewish Peace Group in New York and of the Executive Committee of Americans for Peace Now, which supports the Peace Now movement in Israel.
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Visit Michael Ratner’s Blog for news on the progressive frontlines.
Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Laying the Foundation for a Police State – Part 1 – Building Blocks
Since July of 2004, Law and Disorder has brought Pacifica listeners the voices of activists, authors and attorneys from the front lines.
In the weeks to come, Law and Disorder hosts will examine in a four part series, the foundation for what many see as a police state in the United States. In this series they will talk with guests about the post 9/11 blueprint of this dictatorship/ police state and how the nefarious turn to war, the use of torture and the domestic propagation of fear unfolded.
Law and Disorder hosts have covered at length topics such as torture, domestic surveillance, criminalizing dissent, racial profiling, indefinite detentions and the destruction of constitutional rights as vital information to bring an understanding to listeners as to how it happened and where we go from here.
In this first series, the hosts begin with a look back at where they were on the day of September 11th, and how the Patriot Act was pushed through the Legislature immediately after the attacks on that day. They look at the racial profiling and roundup of Muslims and the rush to invade Afghanistan and Iraq using the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
Co-host Dalia Hashad describes her experiences as an attorney formerly with the ACLU right after September 11th as thousands of Muslim-Americans were rounded up or corralled because of their ethnicity or political affiliation.
Tracked in America – Samina Sundas
Samina Sundas with American Muslim Voice helped her fellow Muslims and Pakistani-Americans integrate into mainstream American society, and her role intensified after 9/11. When the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS, also known as the Special Registration program) was instituted in September 2002, Muslims all over the United States contacted her confused and worried about how it would affect them. She couldn’t get clear answers from federal immigration officials despite several meetings. After that, she set up an ad hoc hotline that has since become part of an organization called American Muslim Voice.
Framework of Police State laws since 9/11
Co-host Michael Ratner leads the way through the timeline from setting up the legal basis for a global war on terror to justifying a secret system of prisons and interrogation techniques that evade historic safeguards in the Geneva Convention.
Guest – Scott Horton, Chair of International Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association and adjunct Professor of Law at Columbia University. He is also the author of over 200 articles and monographs on legal developments in nations in transition.
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Law and Disorder Co-host Michael Ratner Launches Blog:Â Just Left
Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Alamo Car Rental – Discrimination Verdict
In our ongoing coverage of racial profiling and religious bias since 9/11, we go now to look at a case that ended in a big verdict for an employee who was fired for wearing a head scarf. Recently, a federal jury in Phoenix awarded more than 280 thousand dollars in a religious discrimination suit against Alamo Car Rental. The suit was brought by U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Alamo Car Rental was charged on a post-9/11 backlash discrimination based on religion.
The case involved Bilan Nur, a woman of Somali descent who was let go from her customer service position in December 2001 after the Alamo car rental office she worked at in Phoenix refused to let her wear a headscarf to work.
Guest – Valerie Meyer, EEOC Attorney in Phoenix, Arizona.
Guest – Bilan Nur
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Verdict in Post 9/11 Roundup
Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller may be sued from ethnic and religious discrimination after 9/11. Former detainee, Javaid Iqbal was among the hundreds of muslims rounded up after 9/11 being held in maximum security conditions after they were identified as being of high interest to the investigation.
Iqbal, a Pakistani Muslim, was arrested at his Long Island home on Nov. 2, 2001, and was charged with nonviolent federal crimes unrelated to terrorism. Two months later, he was moved to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he was held in solitary confinement for more than 150 days without a hearing, his lawsuit alleged.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan recently recognized that Iqbal had the right not to be subjected to needlessly harsh conditions of confinement, the right to be free from the use of excessive force and the right not to be subjected to ethnic or religious discrimination.
Guest – Alex Reinert, Attorney and Law professor at the Cardoza School of Law.
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Law and Disorder Co-host Michael Ratner Launches Blog
Just Left
