Senators reached a compromise last night to their plan, approved 49-42 last week, to prevent detainees abroad from having any right to judicial review of their detention. The Washington Post today here notes that the compromise is better than the original removal of review, but still raises significant concerns in the case of a government that has a known record for holding persons merely suspected of terrorist activity for years, rendering some to countries that are known to commit torture, and engaging in abusive practices in military and CIA prisons (including the maintenance of "black sites" without access by the Red Cross) that leave our record on human rights suspect in the eyes of the world. The first two paragraphs of the story are worth quoting in full.
"HERE'S A QUIZ: What is the proper congressional response to an administration that is holding prisoners in secret facilities with no Red Cross access, asserting the right to treat those prisoners cruelly and inhumanely, and insisting that the president -- and the president alone -- can make the rules for how all detainees are to be dealt with and when (if ever) they are to be released?
If your answer is that Congress should further enable the administration by barring prisoners' last chance of judicial review, then you're on the same wavelength as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and a plurality of his colleagues. Last week the Senate voted, 49 to 42, in favor of Mr. Graham's proposal to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear challenges by inmates at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to their confinement or to the administration's plans to try some of them in a kind of military court. Senators announced a bipartisan compromise last night in the form of a plan that would allow limited appeals rights when military commissions convict someone or when they are designated enemy combatants. Assuming it is adopted tomorrow, that would be a significant improvement over the original language, although important problems would remain. As senators continue to work toward a final version, they should think hard about what they are doing and how their action will be perceived in the world."
We have compromised our integrity by the mere appearance of condoning torture, and may actually have committed torture regularly in our prisons. We have held thousands of detainees, many of them innocent, in prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, without sufficient process. We have held persons in Guantanamo for years without any rights. It is time that those persons were provided appropriate due process rights. The Senate's first approach--to deny all habeas rights to persons held abroad--was wrong. Let's hope the Senate does that "hard thinking" recommended by the Post and comes up with a policy for judicial review of those held by the military and intelligence arms of the government that we Americans can be proud of.
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