Obama during a September 8, 2008 campaign rally stated: "Habeas corpus ... is the foundation of Anglo-American law, which says very simply, if the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, 'Why was I grabbed?' and say, 'Maybe, you've got the wrong person." (Thanks to Rachel Oswald’s article in Raw Story for this reference.)
"The reason we have that safeguard is we don't always have the right person," said Obama at the campaign rally. "We don't always catch the right person. We may think this is Muhammad the terrorist. It might be Muhammad the cab driver."
On March 12, 2009, the Obama Justice Department kicked this foundation out from under the edifice of Anglo-American law by arguing that the June 2008 Supreme Court decision (Boumediene v Bush) that held that Gitmo detainees had a right to challenge their detention, did not apply to those detainees held (and tortured) prior to Boumediene.
The Justice Department states in its brief:
"Boumediene - decided four years after plaintiffs' detention ended - cannot support a finding that the law was so clearly established that a reasonable official would have known that his or her conduct violated the Constitution or the RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] statute."
As Rachel Oswald recounts:
“The brief was filed as part of the Rasul v. Rumsfeld lawsuit of four former detainees, who include the ‘Tipton Three,’ and are seeking damages for their detention and reported torture at Guantanamo Bay against Rumsfeld, the Chairmen of the Joint Chief of Staffs and other top military officials. The suit charges them with violations of the Fifth and Eighth Amendments, the Alien Tort Statute, the Geneva Conventions and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The plaintiffs are individually each seeking $10 million in damages.
“The men were held for more than two years at Guantanamo where they were reportedly subjected to regular beatings, death threats, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, forced nakedness, interrogations at gun point and religious and racial harassment. They were never charged with any crime. The men were released in March 2004 and returned to their home country of Britain.”
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