Even worse is the case of Abdul-salam al-Hela, who has been confined at Gitmo for nearly 20 years and has not yet been charged with a crime. The government's dilemma is its fixation on torture. The evidence it has against al-Hela was obtained by the torture of al-Hela himself and others. The government knows that it cannot be used in any criminal prosecution in any American court. Yet, under the administration of President George W. Bush, torture was encouraged, rewarded and never punished.
The CIA in the Bush years behaved as if the Constitution to which its officers took an oath of support was just a piece of paper, without the force of law, without a moral underpinning and without the guarantees of due process. And in both of these cases, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., which has jurisdiction over the Constitution trashers at Gitmo, has permitted this to occur; in Khan's case because he is not an American, and in al-Hela's case because he is too dangerous - even after 20 years of unjust imprisonment - to be set free.
Neither of these excuses holds up under even rudimentary scrutiny. The plain language of the Fifth Amendment protects all persons, not just Americans, and it protects them from the very deprivation of liberty that the feds are presently causing. If the government can decide on its own to confine prisoners after they have served their terms or to confine them without filing charges, then no one's liberty is safe and the guarantees of the Constitution are toothless and meaningless.
As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, when the government assaults the very liberties it was hired to protect, it is time to alter or abolish it.
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