I guarantee you that it will happen again if the United States continues to prevail on its allies to hold people against whom it does not intend to make a case.
Each and every subsequent person whom the United States asks to be held pending “future” charges now has the Raissi case to point to. The improper prosecution of this case has greatly increased the possibility of a future terrorist going free, regardless of whether this particular guy did anything.
Oh, I got another guarantee for you whilst I’m here. I guarantee you that a contest of “I lost more” wholly without class.
Well, December, in a court of law, the man was found innocent. Now you can debate that he was not tried on whether or not he was innocent, but whether or not the evidence was sufficient grounds for probable cause for extradition. Not even a not guilty verdict because it never got far enough to plausibly hold a trial.
Unlike most people in the world, Raissi actually went through a legal process that cleared him. the judge said he found no evidence of terrorism. That’s good enough for me that the Raissi is not a terrorist. In fact, he has proven his innocence unlike the rest of us on this board.
As I understand it, the U.S. case revolves around the fact that the man is A) Algerian, B) a personal acquaintance of all four hijackers, C) made several unexplained trips to the United States just before Sept. 11 (one in June, one in July), and D) Met up with one of the hijackers in Las Vegas and flew with him to Arizona for unspecified reasons.
This is all quite troubling, but it is <i>circumstantial</i>. There are very good reasons why we don’t convict people of crimes based on circumstantial evidence. I most emphatically do not believe that we should lower standards for criminal convictions just because the accusation is one of terrorism.
However… I sure hope U.S. intelligence services are keeping a careful eye on that guy. The evidence may be circumstantial, but it’s still troubling.
I also agree with the others in that we treat people as innocent until proven guilty. This man is not required to PROVE his innocence - it’s up to the state to prove his guilt. And there are no shades of innocence under the law - I have no idea why December is trying to frame the discussion around a probability of guilt. As far as the law is concerned, he’s either guilty beyond reasonable doubt, or he’s as innocent as I am.
All that said, I must say something about Ashcroft and military tribunals. Ashcroft is not stupid - he is Attorney General, and has been practicing criminal law his entire life. He understands rules of evidence. So I consider it *possible that there is evidence that he simply can’t disclose in a public trial, and this is the exact reason for military tribunals. Ashcroft may know the guy is guilty, but that knowledge may be the result of information obtained from an agent in the field who would be compromised if it were disclosed. Or perhaps someone in Bin Laden’s organization is singing, and we don’t want the world to know who it is, so that we can trap Bin Laden and keep the informant in place.
This is why I have some sympathy for people who are saying that we can’t try all these terrorists like criminals. Evidence collected in military operations can be sensitive, and anyway it’s hard to maintain a provenance and legal chain of possession for evidence collected on the battlefield.
Hey, chances are someone is going to be suspect due to circumstantial evidence and is quite innocent. I am sure there have been many cases but in particular I remember the case of some business man of middle eastern extraction. It turns out he flew frequently and some of his flights seemed to coincide with some of the movements of the highjakers. The man was held in prison for weeks and months. This is a man who had a wife, kids, a business to run. His life was totally destroyed and then the government admitted they had absofuckinglutely nothing that pointed directly at him, just some circumstantial evidence.
We accept the risk of being victims of common criminals rather than give the government broad powers to lock up everybody who might be a criminal. Thousands and thousands of Americans die each year victims of common crimes and nobody calls for martial law. The victims of terrorism have been much lower… and that justifies giving up the basic principles on which the US was founded? I don’t think so. But maybe december would like to move to a country like that and there are plenty of them around for him to move to. Countries where a suspicion from the authorities is enough to land you in jail.
I take your point, sailor, regarding the analogy to criminal law. However, there’s this difference. The cost of leaving a terrorist loose may be much greater than the cost of aquitting a guilty criminal. Criminals generally harm their victims one at a time. A single Palestinean suicide bomber can kill dozens of people. On 9/11, a mere nineteen terrorists killed 3,000 people.
Before someone puts words in my mouth, I don’t know how to deal with this difference. All I’m saying is that it shouldn’t be ignored.
Actually, here in the U.S. we do. Very frequently. The case against Robert Blake for example.
I’m not familiar enough with the evidence to say whether the judge’s decision was correct or not. I will say (IMO) that I have seen Ashcroft on some occasions make some spectacular leaps of logic in his public vilifications.
Does anyone know if the UK has different standards for the use of circumstantial evidence than the U.S.?
In fact, the best evidence is often circumstantial evidence. (Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.)
But I think Sam Stone’s first point is valid, if rephrased: We can’t (and don’t) convict people based on association with known criminals. We can certainly suspect them of crimes based on their associates, but we must prove a -circumstantial- connection to definite crimes.
Now, as to Ashcroft’s supposed perspicacity in criminal matters… I don’t think he’s actually been “practicing criminal law his entire life” as Sam believes. He’s certainly not been showing any familiarity with rules of evidence. If he’s playing his evidentiary cards so close to his vest by design, why even try and obtain an extradition in this case? How does this in any way advance the “war” on terror he’s supposedly helping Bush ibn Bush to wage?
No, this isn’t, IMO, an instance of either sage stewardship of secret evidence, or tragic release of a dangerous felon; it’s just another example of Ashcroft’s belief in the basic rightness of his own (and his party’s) worldview. If Ashcroft thinks someone looks like a terrorist, well why delay justice with incidental irritations such as civil rights? Civil rights are only for the right people, anyway.
And that’s a far more dangerous thing this country must face in the coming years than terrorism is, no matter how incompetent the Attorney General now seems to be. He has, after all, considerable weight of government behind him in this.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by xenophon41 Now, as to Ashcroft’s supposed perspicacity in criminal matters… I don’t think he’s actually been “practicing criminal law his entire life” as Sam believes.
[QUOTE]
Only if his entire life was the years 1975-85, and then his position was administrative rather than in court.
His career:
1973-74 - Auditor for Missouri
1975-76 - Missouri Assistant Attorney General
1976-85 - Attorney General for Missouri
1985 - 1993 - Governor of Missouri
1994 - 2000 - U.S. Senator for Missouri
Sam, where do you come up with these “facts” - the same places as december?
Well, debate on this subject has calmed down a bit since my earlier postings on the iniquity of Camp X-Ray and the ‘Disappeared’.
I find that pleasing.
The fact that Ashcroft has been knocked back by a court (which note, English rules will allow circumstantial evidence, but it must be convincing) shows that there might be a fault with his reasoning over the Gitmo inmates and the other people detained for no clear reason by the FBI over the past six months.
It is additionally worrying that the British Government has not seen fit to detain this man for some other reason- this implies that Ashcroft has NO evidence, even from protected sources, else he would have shared its existence with Tony Blair who could have used many of the draconian powers available to the Executive in the UK to pretend to be the Judiciary. Therefore, I assume, no evidence at all.
Now the USA is asking the EU to weaken its protection of potential extraditees:
It goes without saying that the EU will refuse extradition unless the Death Penalty is excluded.
Actions like Ashcroft’s over Lofti Raissi will only reinforce the opinion widespread in Europe that the US has gone (possibly only) temporarily crazy over terorrism since 9/11- seeming to want to throw out the Rule of Law, Rules of Evidence, Presumption of Innocence etc…
The Administration’s equivocation over the rights of the Gitmo detainees has caused considerable concern in Europe.
Questions have also been raised about the method of trial proposed within the US for current (non-Gitmo) detainees.
These types of actions will make it increasingly likely that European states will become less likely to bend to the US’s will over these matters.
As I said in my earlier posts, ‘losing the moral highground’ will have costs- and the EU reaction to US ‘Justice’ over these matters will be among the earliest casualties.
december, explaining things to you is a waste of time but I feel obligated to refute your nonsense just so that it does not go unanswered. It is quite scary that there are people like you who believe it is ok to dispose of basic human rights if we find it convenient. When countries do that, everybody loses all their rights.
Look, in western culture, we do not sacrifice the basic rights of individuals in order to benefit the majority. It is a basic tenet of our culture that the individual has some basic rights which no one can take away without due process of law, no matter how convenient it would be for the rest to do otherwise. It is in the US constitution, which you might want to have a look at.
So, if we have a case where some terrorist group is holding 20 hostages and they threaten to kill them unless we hand them over Salman Rushdie, the only response a civilized society can give is “no, we do not do that because we are not free to give what is not ours to give”. That is what they do in countries where individual rights are not respected and it is very scary that some people think like you. In a country where the individual loses his rights to the majority, no one has any rights.
No matter how protected you feel if they would put a bunch of people in jail for which there is no solid evidence that they committed a crime, it is not what civilised societies do. Only barbaric societies do that and only barbaric people would demand that. Civilised societies take pride in the majority giving up some convenience in order to protect the rights of the minorities.
It was a waste of time to end my last post with the statement, “Before someone puts words in my mouth, I don’t know how to deal with this difference. All I’m saying is that it shouldn’t be ignored.”
OK, I agree in this example. However, there have actually been other cases that are less clear-cut. Suppose the terrorists say, “Release some imprisoned terroists or we’ll kill the hostages.” In some cases, the imprisoned terrorists were released and then went on to commit more murders.
What if the terrorists in sailor’s example had 200 hostages or 200,000? (E.g., if they had the ability to detonate a nuclear weapon in a city?)
Again, I do not know the answer. I do say that a full moral or political analysis should include accounting for the consequences. At some point, the specific threat may be so great as to outweigh a temporary suspenson of normal civil liberties.
What happens when civilized society is fighting against barbarians? This was a key issue in the movie Breaker Morant.
E.g., civilized societies don’t stop ambulances. But, what if they’re fighting barbarians who use ambulances to transport bombs?
Civilized societies don’t raze a civilian town like Jenin. But, what if they’re fighting barbarians who put their military installations right in the middle of a civilian town?
I am not worried that a terrorist may have been freed by a legal ruling because Ashcroft et al were unable to demonstrate probable cause for extradition. Given that the largest portion of U.S. security forces are currently dedicated to fighting terrorism, I believe that, if there was something to be found, it would have been found. In other words, if the entire city’s fire department didn’t find a fire, I doubt that there is one.
Assuming there’s no perversion of justice here (like letting an obvious terrorist go on a technicality) then since I am much, much further from the case than Ashcroft et al are, I have to believe that their failure is proof positive that he is not a terrorist. I could be wrong, but I believe the odds of that are less than the odds of my nephew’s kindergarten teacher being a serial murderer.
In other words, the possibility that he’s a terrorist has been rendered so miniscule by Ashcroft’s failure, that it doesn’t even register with me.
you’re ignoring **manhattan’s ** point - you should be most angry w/Ashcroft, december 'cause by insisting on holding this guy, where there apparently wasn’t even enough evidence to suggest that he continue to be held (let alone enough to sustain a guilty verdict) , Ashcroft has led with the ‘weak card’.
He urged (and continues to urge) other countries to hold on to these people, (while holding on to quite a few here and in Gitmo) all the while assuring everyone ’ these guys are really dangerous, it’s for everybody’s safety that we’re doing it, and if we happen to skirt some of the rules of evidence and law in the meantime, it’s really for a good cause you know’. and here we are one of the first times he has to ‘put up or shut up’ in court and display evidence, the judge finds it singularly uncompelling.
what does that do for our credibility? for future urging about arrests and detaining people?
manny’s right, Ashcroft has given them all reason to suspect our methods and motives. shame on him.
december, it would be illegal, indeed unconstitiutional, to jail people without due process and without any probable cause (which has clearly been established in this case). Do you advocate breaking the law so some people can be held illegally? Or do you propose a constitutional amendment? What are the chances it would pass? Do you think there are many people who think like you in America?
Elvis, give it a rest, will you? I had assumed that Ashcroft worked his way to attorney general the way most people do - i.e. go to law school get a degree, become a lawyer, work as a prosecutor, maybe district attorney, etc.
If not, I stand corrected. It’s a trivial point to waste an entire message attacking, considering that I agree with you in the first place that the rules of evidence should not be changed just because the guy is accused of being a terrorist, and that people are innocent until proven guilty.
I’m a pretty strong civil libertarian, so don’t confuse me with the ‘law and order’ conservative types.
Losing a case doesn’t automatically mean that anybody’s civil liberties were violated. Ashcroft hoped there was enough evidence to extradite Raissi; the judge disagreed. That’s why the hearing was held.
Not in this case. However, I can imagine more extreme circumstances where I would favor the President taking on emergency powers.
No.
The process is too slow. Passing an an amendment would take several years.
Depends on circumstances. E.g., suppose some terrorists detonated a “dirty bomb.” which made San Francisco dangerously radioactive. In that case I think an overwhelming majority would support giving the President any emergency powers he wanted.
Even after “just” the WTC, I think the majority of Americans are unconcerned about military tribunals, detentions and other questionable tactics.
Ashcroft is a pretty well-known person here, and the basic facts of his career are pretty well-known too. It’s just as easy to spend a minute looking up information as to “assume” something that most people closer to the subject actually know, such as in your non-fact-based assertion that “we” don’t convict people on circumstantial evidence (“you” do too, ya know). Unless you aren’t interested in credibility, that is.
Then demonstrate an actual difference with them in your posts, or else continue to cause that confusion. Or is it confusion at all?
