ACLU National Security Project director Jameel Jaffer said, "To allow the government to imprison terrorism suspects indefinitely without charge or trial would fundamentally alter the character of American democracy. And a preventive detention system would be a human rights disaster whether based on a statute enacted by Congress or an executive order issued by the President."
Michael Ratner, president of the Center For Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy organization that has mobilized dozens of lawyers to represent GITMO detainees, said, "Prolonged imprisonment without trial is exactly the Guantanamo system that the President promised to shut down. Whatever form it takes - from Congress or the President's pen - it is anathema to the basic principles of American law and the courts will find it unconstitutional."
Some Constitutional scholars were equally outspoken. Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois law school said, "The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a party, clearly requires that alleged terrorists be given a trial."
He added, "Unlike President Bush, President Obama is a lawyer and used to teach Constitutional Law. He must know better. The fact that President Obama and his administration are once again continuing the illegal and totalitarian Bush administration policies does not augur well for the future of our Republic, its Constitution and Bill of Rights, as well as America's commitment to the Rule of Law."
But opposition to the indefinite detention idea is not limited to the Left. Bruce Fein, a well-known Conservative who served in the Department of Justice during the Reagan presidency, said, "Indefinite detention without accusation or trial is a terrible idea. If the United States government is unable to assemble evidence of guilt (including conspiracy to provide material assistance, which criminalizes even unalarming plots in their embryonic stages) with all its staggering resources devoted to counterterrorism, including huge bounties for informants, then the suspect is probably innocent."
Ramzi Kassem of Yale law school said, "After years of hearing it from the Bush Administration, it is now plain that the phrase 'individuals who cannot be tried but are too dangerous to release' is code for situations where our government broke the law and tortured people and now cannot go to court with what it obtained through torture."
"This is a false dilemma. For centuries our system has stood for the principle that torture evidence is inadmissible as a moral matter and because it is unreliable. Our government thinks certain individuals are dangerous because of what it learned by torturing them or others. That information is as worthless in this context as it would be in any other. If all we have on someone is torture evidence, then that person should be let go. That is what the rule of law has always meant in this country."
Chip Pitts, head of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, said, "In its relentless search for 'pragmatic solutions' and 'compromises', the Obama administration seems to continually neglect the larger, systemic costs of perpetuating the legally flawed, constitutionally imbalanced, and ineffective Bush approaches. Such an executive order would not only taint any legitimate prosecutions of terrorists in U.S. courts (by establishing this "shadow" system where difficult-to-prosecute suspects could be held by executive fiat), but would also jeopardize prospects for restoring U.S. leadership and success on national security as well as other foreign policy goals. At a time when the U.S. is rightly criticizing Iran for using precisely such techniques, it is ironic in the extreme that the administration is considering institutionalizing such regressive approaches here at home. The ability of the global system to respond to terrorism, economic crises, and other challenges not yet perceived vitally depends on maintaining open societies premised on universal and fundamental human rights -- an insight the United States forgets at its peril."
He continued: "The Obama Administration now seems to be proposing that, instead of our tested system, we should improvise a new mechanism that will allow us to use torture evidence, a system that will allow us to get away with breaking the law, a system that delivers convictions but not justice. This new system would inevitably dilute our commitment to the rule of law, both perceived and real."
"It will also mean that the United States will have formalized a double standard in its administration of justice. One set of individuals will get the full panoply of legal protections afforded by our Constitution while another group-mostly or exclusively composed of Muslims-will get justice light and indefinite detention unreviewable by a real court."
And Prof. Brian J. Foley of the Boston University School of Law said, "Indefinite detention based on evidence that cannot be presented in a U.S. court is likely indefinite detention based on unreliable evidence (confessions extracted by torture, hearsay and other un-cross-examined testimony and hunches that may be infected with bias or mistake). Locking up the wrong people will not help us prevent terrorism and indeed might mislead us into believing we have diminished the threat."
But other observers were more cautious. Prof. David M. Glazier of the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles said, "It is hard to judge the legality of the Obama Administration proposal because of the vagueness in the reporting. The real legal flaw with Guantanamo is not the concept of indefinite detention, but rather the failure to conform it to the law of war. Confinement in prison cells, coercive interrogation, and even routine shackling of prisoners all violate the law of war."
According to The Washington Post, "Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order." Such an order could be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation.
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