Bush signs away detainees' rights
President Bush today signed the Military Commissions Act. Now American intelligence officials may legally detain any non-American indefinitely, without recourse to legal challenge or representation, without appeal to the Geneva Coventions' protections against mistreatment and abuse, virtually without hope. The velvet glove is off, and the United States Congress has willed away the last remaining shred of moral legitimacy that it may have held before this infamous "war on terror." Americans would do well to ask themselves when it will be their turn to face torture and arbitrary detention at the hands of their own goverment.
-El Moe
From Amnesty International
By signing the Military Commissions Act, President Bush is continuing to undermine basic principles of justice and creating a climate in which more human rights violations will occur. The only way of providing security for all and redress for the victims of terrorism is by delivering real justice.
The Act, passed by US Congress in late September, has turned bad executive policy into bad domestic law.
Amnesty International had repeateadly called on Congress to reject the Military Commissions Act in its entirety. The organization will now campaign for its repeal It fully expects the constitutionality of this legislation to be challenged in the courts.
In the "war on terror", the US administration has resorted to secret detention, enforced disappearance, prolonged incommunicado detention, indefinite detention without charge, arbitrary detention, and torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Thousands of detainees remain in indefinite military detention in US custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. Congress has failed these detainees and their families. The Military Commissions Act contravenes human rights principles.
What you need to know about the Military Commissions Act
Among other things, the Act:
-El Moe
From Amnesty International
By signing the Military Commissions Act, President Bush is continuing to undermine basic principles of justice and creating a climate in which more human rights violations will occur. The only way of providing security for all and redress for the victims of terrorism is by delivering real justice.
The Act, passed by US Congress in late September, has turned bad executive policy into bad domestic law.
Amnesty International had repeateadly called on Congress to reject the Military Commissions Act in its entirety. The organization will now campaign for its repeal It fully expects the constitutionality of this legislation to be challenged in the courts.
In the "war on terror", the US administration has resorted to secret detention, enforced disappearance, prolonged incommunicado detention, indefinite detention without charge, arbitrary detention, and torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Thousands of detainees remain in indefinite military detention in US custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. Congress has failed these detainees and their families. The Military Commissions Act contravenes human rights principles.
What you need to know about the Military Commissions Act
Among other things, the Act:
- Strips the US courts of jurisdiction to hear or consider habeas corpus appeals challenging the lawfulness or conditions of detention of anyone held in US custody as an "enemy combatant". Judicial review of cases are severely limited. The law applies retroactively, and thus may result in more than 200 pending appeals filed on behalf of Guantánamo detainees being thrown out of court.
- Permits the executive to convene military commissions to try "alien unlawful enemy combatants", as determined by the executive under a dangerously broad definition, in trials that will provide foreign nationals so labeled with a lower standard of justice than US citizens accused of the same crimes. This violates the prohibition on the discriminatory application of fair trial rights.
- Permits the use in military commission trials of evidence extracted under cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
- Gives the military commissions the power to hand down death sentences after trials that did not meet international standards.
- Permits the executive to determine who is an "enemy combatant" under any "competent tribunal" established by the executive, and endorses the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT), the wholly inadequate administrative procedure that has been employed in Guantánamo to review individual detentions.
- Prohibits any person from invoking the Geneva Conventions or their protocols as a source of rights in any action in any US court.
- Narrows the scope of the War Crimes Act by not expressly criminalizing acts that constitute "outrages upon personal dignity, particularly humiliating and degrading treatment" banned under international law. Amnesty International believes that the USA has routinely failed to respect the human dignity of detainees in the "war on terror".
- Endorses the administration’s "war paradigm" – under which the USA has selectively applied the laws of war and rejected international human rights law. The legislation backdates the "war on terror" to before the 11 September 2001 in order to be able to try individuals in front of military commissions for "war crimes" committed before that date.
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