all I hear about is his right to have a trial. and this and that and how its like 1984. something I have not heard… are we railroading him or is he like “yeah I did it, got a signed letter from osama in my sock drawer… death to great satan!”
I am sorta sketched out if he is sitting crying saying “I didn’t do anything! please let me go! I’m innosent!! isn’t someone going to listen to me!” if thats how this all is then I am awful scared of the government right now.
but is that how it is? IS he saying he is innosent? trials don’t really matter so much if there is no question on outcome anyway! a fair trial is only required if… there is a queston that needs to be answered.
not heard on the news… but is that how it is? someone please answer.
Even if he has made such a statement, he still, under our Constitution, must have access to counsel, must be formally charged, must have an indictment presented and an arraignment held, and be permitted to plead guilty to a judge. None of these things has yet occurred.
99.44% of all persons in prison say they are innocent, so why should he be any different? You’re all sketched out you say. Did you recently fly to a foreign country and meet with terrorists? Did you then fly back and arrive at customs with over $10,000 in your possession? Do you have design plans for a “dirty bomb” on your computer? If you have answered “yes” to all of these questions then you probably should be sketched out. I’m sketched out because they announced that there are a half dozen other American citizens, who have been detained because of their association with terrorist groups in Afghanistan, since 9/11. This is not tiddly winks we’re playing.
yes its something illigal they are doing with him, I get that. however the amount this is scary changes alot in my mind if he is denying that he was doing anything.
if he is sitting in prison crying out that they are holding him for no reason and that he was doing nothing and should be free. then I am scared that they are railroading him like this, as he basicly is already decided guilty.
if he admits he was planning to kill a bunch of people, and that he is in league with osama… then its really a diffrent case, the government is still doing something it technically can’t do, but seems less like the downfall of america that way.
no one will answer my question I suspect. people love to just use this sort of thing to further their cause (america is trying to be a police state, its like 1984 EXACTLY ect… ect…)
what does he have to say about it? terrorists are real and not a myth, and we live in odd times, not odd enough to just beat up random americans… but if someone is jumping up and down yelling about how they are going to use a radioactive bomb to destroy the great satan and actually has the materials to do so… I am not totally against a little bending of rules. I really dislike radiation… makes my skin hurt
If you want more paranoia fodder, consider that all of the information we have so far has come from one source – the US government. Has any independent source corroborated any of the claims?
What is scary to me is the precedent they are setting. Enemy combatant, eh? If I understand correctly, he does not even fit the criteria of enemy combatant. Is it true that EC’s dont’ get a trial?
Who is the next enemy combatant going to be? And the one after that…? I think it is a farse so that Ashcroft gets to run his little police state,and when he goes to defend “homeland security” office, he can say…“Look, its working we got one!” Give me more power!!!
Press reports down here feature alleged quotes from his sister that during the initial period of detention (before being declared an enemy combatant so the government) there was some contact with the family’s lawywer and Al-Mujahir did claim he "didn’t do nuthin’ ", so to speak. (His grandparents live here, so there’s a local angle) OTOH the reliability of the source is itself an unknown quantity.
There is a real war on, friends. Please remember this.
Because of the war, the usual rules (Constitutional rights and priveleges) don’t apply to those making war upon us. This is why he is held as an Enemy Combatant. He is one.
In a war, you don’t formally indict, try, and convict an enemy soldier taking shots —or attempting to take shots— at you. Due process is accelerated considerably by getting him before he gets you. It’s messy, but it’s necessary for survival.
To reveal all the sources of intelligence that led us to identify and intercept this guy would compromise those sources and vastly facilitate another successful attack on us or other western countries. This would not only be incredibly stupid, it would be downright suicidal.
If you were a national leader, would —could you— go in front of your people and say that you intend, in the interest of fairness, to allow enemies of your country (who’ve already demonstrated their willingness to cary out acts like the whole 9-11 deal) to have essentailly complete knowledge of the sources and methods you use to know what they might be up to?
Mr. Dirty Bomber should consider himself fortunate to have been captured by us in the US, as if the shoe were on the other foot (for instance, if he was some kind of agent caught infiltrating Al Qeda) there would be no discussion about rights or status. Even some of our close allies would not hesitate for a moment to apply very considerable duress in extracting whatever they wished from DB if he’d fallen into their hands.
AFAIK, he seems to be claiming —through his lawyer— that he is being held illegally (unconstitutionally), and he is implying but not explicitly stating that “hey, I was just a tourist over in Pakistan; I ain’t no terrorist”.
Claiming that he is not an enemy combatant and requiriing the government to show proof that he is would require that the government reveal its information and establish the reliability and credibility of the sources. That would compromise those sources.
One could therefore make a case for the idea that while his primary mission might have been to do recon for a dirty bomb attack, his new mission has become forcing the US government to reveal its intelligence sources.
While IANAL or an expert on this new set of laws that lets the government do what it’s doing, I would think there is some kind of process that defines at least the reasonable suspicion they use to stop and detain guys like DB. Some of the popular press seems to want to portray this process as nothing more than the Nazi’s Nacht und Nebel.
Not to turn this into a Great Debate, but just because there’s a “war” going on (one which has not been formally declared, I will note) does not mean we should automatically jettison the Bill of Rights as a result.
Or should we now simply allow the FBI to conduct door-to-door searches of every home in America, in hopes of finding any vipers in our midst?
No, but there are certainly ways to preserve national security while making sure that the suspect’s rights are not removed prematurely. Remember, it’s “innocent until proven guilty.”
And I’m suspicious of an administration that allegedly captured the suspected bomber in early May, yet didn’t bother to make any mention of this arrest until the public started making a ruckus over failures in the FBI and CIA…