The FBI says that there may be a possible terrorist link to Rochester. Law enforcement officials have arrested a local man whose being accused of lying to the government about a suspected terrorist who lived in Rochester.
Mohamed Subeh is free on $20,000 bond. He told News 10 NBC that he came to the US 15 years ago to start a new life. He has 5 American born daughters and says he has “no reason” to lie. But, the government isn’t buying it.
Subeh is a business owner and lives in a quiet Rochester neighborhood, but Friday the US Attorneys Office indicted him on 3 counts of giving false statement to the FBI.
The FBI says that there may be a possible terrorist link to Rochester. Law enforcement officials have arrested a local man whose being accused of lying to the government about a suspected terrorist who lived in Rochester.
Mohamed Subeh is free on $20,000 bond. He told News 10 NBC that he came to the US 15 years ago to start a new life. He has 5 American born daughters and says he has “no reason” to lie. But, the government isn’t buying it.
Subeh is a business owner and lives in a quiet Rochester neighborhood, but Friday the US Attorneys Office indicted him on 3 counts of giving false statement to the FBI.
The indictment claims Subeh knew a man interested in becoming a suicide bomber in Israel with the al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade. The terrorist group has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide bombings in Israel.
Subeh told News 10 NBC that that man is his 20-year-old brother Ismaeel. Subeh says the FBI has been questioning him about Ismaeel since he left the country for Israel last may. He says Ismaeel left to marry a woman in the West Bank, not to help a terrorist group.
Subeh’s attorney, Miguel Reyes says the government is indicting his client because his story doesn’t match up with theirs. Subeh has consistently claimed his brother’s innocence. But Reyes tells News 10 NBC that Ismaeel’s new wife has a brother who was a suicide bomber. He acknowledges the US fight against terrorism is legitimate one, but says the government has the wrong man this time. Reyes says, “we as a nation need to decide and to be honest that if we have changed our minds and we don't want Arabs in the US, we should be honest and tell them.”
For it’s part, the US Attorney’s Office says its terrorism investigations depend on people telling the truth. The investigation will continue.
Subeh could face a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison or a $250,000 fine if convicted at trial.
Op/Ed, New York Times by Richard Clarke
The last month has seen a remarkable series of events that focused the public and news media on America's shortcomings in dealing with terrorism from radical Islamists. This catharsis, which is not yet over, is necessary for our national psyche. If we learn the right lessons, it may also prove to be an essential part of our future victory over those who now threaten us.
But how do we select the right lessons to learn? I tried to suggest some in my recent book, and many have attempted to do so in the 9/11 hearings, but such efforts have been largely eclipsed by partisan reaction.
April 25, 2004
The Wrong Debate on Terrorism
By RICHARD A. CLARKE
The last month has seen a remarkable series of events that focused the public and news media on America's shortcomings in dealing with terrorism from radical Islamists. This catharsis, which is not yet over, is necessary for our national psyche. If we learn the right lessons, it may also prove to be an essential part of our future victory over those who now threaten us.
But how do we select the right lessons to learn? I tried to suggest some in my recent book, and many have attempted to do so in the 9/11 hearings, but such efforts have been largely eclipsed by partisan reaction.
One lesson is that even though we are the world's only remaining superpower — as we were before Sept. 11, 2001 — we are seriously threatened by an ideological war within Islam. It is a civil war in which a radical Islamist faction is striking out at the West and at moderate Muslims. Once we recognize that the struggle within Islam — not a "clash of civilizations" between East and West — is the phenomenon with which we must grapple, we can begin to develop a strategy and tactics for doing so. It is a battle not only of bombs and bullets, but chiefly of ideas. It is a war that we are losing, as more and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United States and some even develop a respect for the jihadist movement.
I do not pretend to know the formula for winning that ideological war. But I do know that we cannot win it without significant help from our Muslim friends, and that many of our recent actions (chiefly the invasion of Iraq) have made it far more difficult to obtain that cooperation and to achieve credibility.
What we have tried in the war of ideas has also fallen short. It is clear that United States government versions of MTV or CNN in Arabic will not put a dent in the popularity of the anti-American jihad. Nor will calls from Washington for democratization in the Arab world help if such calls originate from a leader who is trying to impose democracy on an Arab country at the point of an American bayonet. The Bush administration's much-vaunted Middle East democracy initiative, therefore, was dead on arrival.
We must also be careful, while advocating democracy in the region, that we do not undermine the existing regimes without having a game plan for what should follow them and how to get there. The lesson of President Jimmy Carter's abandonment of the shah of Iran in 1979 should be a warning. So, too, should we be chastened by the costs of eliminating the regime of Saddam Hussein, almost 25 years after the shah, also without a detailed plan for what would follow.
Other parts of the war of ideas include making real progress on the Israel-Palestinian issue, while safe-guarding Israeli security, and finding ideological and religious counter-weights to Osama bin Laden and the radical imams. Fashioning a comprehensive strategy to win the battle of ideas should be given as much attention as any other aspect of the war on terrorists, or else we will fight this war for the foreseeable future. For even when Osama bin Laden is dead, his ideas will carry on. Even as Al Qaeda has had its leadership attacked, it has morphed into a hydra, carrying out more major attacks in the 30 months since 9/11 than it did in the three years before.
The second major lesson of the last month of controversy is that the organizations entrusted with law enforcement and intelligence in the United States had not fully accepted the gravity of the threat prior to 9/11. Because this is now so clear, there will be a tendency to overemphasize organizational fixes. The 9/11 commission and President Bush seem to be in a race to propose creating a "director of national intelligence," who would be given control over all American intelligence agencies. The commission may also recommend a domestic security intelligence service, probably modeled on Britain's MI-5.
While some structural changes are necessary, they are a small part of the solution. And there is a risk that concentrating on chain-of-authority diagrams of federal agencies will further divert our attention from more important parts of the agenda. This new director of national intelligence would be able to make only marginal changes to agency budgets and interactions. The more important task is improving the quality of the analysts, agents and managers at the lead foreign intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency.
In addition, no new domestic security intelligence service could leap full grown from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security. Indeed, creating another new organization while we are in a key phase in the war on terrorism would ignore the lesson that we should have learned from the creation of Homeland Security. Many observers, including some in the new department, now agree that the forced integration and reorganization of 22 agencies diverted attention from the missions of several agencies that were needed to go after the terrorists and to reduce our vulnerabilities at home.
We do not need another new agency right now. We do, however, need to create within the F.B.I. a strong organization that is vastly different from the federal police agency that was unable to notice the Al Qaeda presence in America before 9/11. For now, any American version of MI-5 must be a branch within the F.B.I. — one with a higher quality of analysts, agents and managers.
Rather than creating new organizations, we need to give the C.I.A. and F.B.I. makeovers. They cannot continue to be dominated by careerists who have carefully managed their promotions and ensured their retirement benefits by avoiding risk and innovation for decades. The agencies need regular infusions throughout their supervisory ranks of managers and thinkers from other, more creative organizational cultures.
In the new F.B.I., marksmanship, arrests and skill on the physical training obstacle course should no longer be prerequisites for recruitment and retention. Similarly, within the C.I.A. we should quash the belief that — as George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told the 9/11 commission — those who have never worked in the directorate of operations cannot understand it and are unqualified to criticize it.
Finally, we must try to achieve a level of public discourse on these issues that is simultaneously energetic and mutually respectful. I hoped, through my book and testimony, to make criticism of the conduct of the war on terrorism and the separate war in Iraq more active and legitimate. We need public debate if we are to succeed. We should not dismiss critics through character assassination, nor should we besmirch advocates of the Patriot Act as fascists.
We all want to defeat the jihadists. To do that, we need to encourage an active, critical and analytical debate in America about how that will best be done. And if there is another major terrorist attack in this country, we must not panic or stifle debate as we did for too long after 9/11.
Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, is the author of "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror."
Saudi Arabia’s Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz said in remarks published Sunday that “no stone will remain unturned in the fight against terror” and called for cooperation with the security forces to identify terror cells that may still be in Saudi Arabia.
Speaking to the Saudi newspaper Al Watan, Prince Nayef said investigations into last Wednesday’s terrorist attack in Riyadh are still underway and the identity of the perpetrators should be announced soon.
Five people were killed and over 140 injured Wednesday in the attack on the capital’s traffic department.
No stone will remain unturned in terrorism battle: Saudi minister
(DPA)
25 April 2004
DUBAI - Saudi Arabia’s Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz said in remarks published Sunday that “no stone will remain unturned in the fight against terror” and called for cooperation with the security forces to identify terror cells that may still be in Saudi Arabia.
Speaking to the Saudi newspaper Al Watan, Prince Nayef said investigations into last Wednesday’s terrorist attack in Riyadh are still underway and the identity of the perpetrators should be announced soon.
Five people were killed and over 140 injured Wednesday in the attack on the capital’s traffic department.
Prince Nayef said the kingdom’s security forces were capable of rooting out terrorism and arresting culprits who have disrupted the nation’s security.
He expressed his strong regret that the perpetrators of last Wednesday’s blast were Saudis and questioned how they were able to stand against their nation and religion and kill innocent citizens while demolishing state property in such a devastating manner.
Saudi Arabia has been battling terrorism since last year’s devastating attacks against residential compounds in Riyadh left more than 50 people killed.
The attacks last year are believed to have been perpetrated by the Al Qaeda terrorist network of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.
Hundreds of residents from across the Valley gathered Sunday night at Phoenix's Patriots Square Park to join what is believed to be the nation's first Muslim rally against terrorism.
"The killing of innocent people out of revenge, out of hate or out of retribution is against the absolute laws of Islam," said Zuhdi Jasser, a physician who organized the rally. "Suicide is against the absolute laws of Islam.
"People can justify their actions all day long, but we as Muslims are here to say clearly their actions are against everything we believe."
Judi Villa
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 26, 2004 12:00 AM
Hundreds of residents from across the Valley gathered Sunday night at Phoenix's Patriots Square Park to join what is believed to be the nation's first Muslim rally against terrorism.
"The killing of innocent people out of revenge, out of hate or out of retribution is against the absolute laws of Islam," said Zuhdi Jasser, a physician who organized the rally. "Suicide is against the absolute laws of Islam.
"People can justify their actions all day long, but we as Muslims are here to say clearly their actions are against everything we believe."
Jasser said he was motivated to organize the rally by ongoing claims that moderate Muslims in the United States have not voiced a "groundswell of condemnation" against the terrorist activity that destroyed the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Jasser said the rally was a way for Muslims to reclaim their faith from those who have exploited it for selfish purposes.
"We do need to stop killing in the name of God," said Shirley Spencer of Phoenix, who attended the rally with her husband, Gene. "It hasn't gotten us anywhere so far."
"We're not working and playing together well," Gene said. "Cockroaches do better than we do."
Soul Khalsa, a Sikh minister, told the crowd that terrorists may still inflict damage in the future but "their day is fading."
"Those people who exploit religion for their own power and greed are a dying breed," Khalsa said. "They are the dinosaurs of this modern era."
Gene Spencer listened to the words and was optimistic such rallies could lead to change.
"It's just a little voice but it's a voice. It's a start," he said. "It's a little electrode but if it bounces against another, who knows what might happen."
The majority of the estimated 250 in attendance Sunday night were not Muslim. They were people like Michael Fischer, 18, of Glendale, who wanted to denounce the stereotyping of Muslims; and Grace Clark of Apache Junction, who wanted to promote peace.
"You just feel like you want to do something," Clark said. "I would like to see the whole world get more together. People who are willing to come together are the only hope we have."
Azra Hussain, a Muslim from Scottsdale, told the crowd that the Islam religion teaches followers to be patient, kind and helpful, and is "very clear on the sanctity of human life."
"I am opposed to killing in any form by anyone," she said. "I know what Islam teaches us and that we should know better."
Ali Homsi, a Muslim from Tempe, said the actions of terrorists "can only be considered crimes" under Islamic law.
"They hide behind the shields of religion while using God's words to justify evil," Homsi said. "This will take all our prayers and good actions to combat. I believe we can make a difference. When someone kills another innocent person, the damage will be to each and every one of us."
LUTON, England, April 24 — The call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered, counterterrorism officials say.
In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street.
They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like Afghanistan under the Taliban. They call the Sept. 11 hijackers the "Magnificent 19" and regard the Madrid train bombings as a clever way to drive a wedge into Europe.
Militants in Europe Openly Call for Jihad and the Rule of Islam
By PATRICK E. TYLER
and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
LUTON, England, April 24 — The call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered, counterterrorism officials say.
In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street.
They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like Afghanistan under the Taliban. They call the Sept. 11 hijackers the "Magnificent 19" and regard the Madrid train bombings as a clever way to drive a wedge into Europe.
On Thursday evening, at a tennis center community hall in Slough, west of London, their leader, Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammad, spoke of his adherence to Osama bin Laden. If Europe fails to heed Mr. bin Laden's offer of a truce — provided that all foreign troops are withdrawn from Iraq in three months — Muslims will no longer be restrained from attacking the Western countries that play host to them, the sheik said.
"All Muslims of the West will be obliged," he said, to "become his sword" in a new battle. Europeans take heed, he added, saying, "It is foolish to fight people who want death — that is what they are looking for."
On working-class streets of old industrial towns like Crawley, Luton, Birmingham and Manchester, and in the Arab enclaves of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe, intelligence officials say a fervor for militancy is intensifying and becoming more open.
In Hamburg, Dr. Mustafa Yoldas, the director of the Council of Islamic Communities, saw a correlation to the discord in Iraq. "This is a very dangerous situation at the moment," Dr. Yoldas said. "My impression is that Muslims have become more and more angry against the United States."
Hundreds of young Muslim men are answering the call of militant groups affiliated or aligned with Al Qaeda, intelligence and counterterrorism officials in the region say.
Even more worrying, said a senior counterterrorism official, is that the level of "chatter" — communications among people suspected of terrorism and their supporters — has markedly increased since Mr. bin Laden's warning to Europe this month. The spike in chatter has given rise to acute worries that planning for another strike in Europe is advanced.
"Iraq dramatically strengthened their recruitment efforts," one counterterrorism official said. He added that some mosques now display photos of American soldiers fighting in Iraq alongside bloody scenes of bombed out Iraqi neighborhoods. Detecting actual recruitments is almost impossible, he said, because it is typically done face to face.
And recruitment is paired with a compelling new strategy to bring the fight to Europe.
Members of Al Qaeda have "proven themselves to be extremely opportunistic, and they have decided to try to split the Western alliance," the official continued. "They are focusing their energies on attacking the big countries" — the United States, Britain and Spain — so as to "scare" the smaller states.
Some Muslim recruits are going to Iraq, counterterrorism officials in Europe say, but more are remaining home, possibly joining cells that could help with terror logistics or begin operations like the one that came to notice when the British police seized 1,200 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a key bomb ingredient, in late March, and arrested nine Pakistani-Britons, five of whom have been charged with trying to build a terrorist bomb.
Stoking that anger are some of the same fiery Islamic clerics who preached violence and martyrdom before the Sept. 11 attacks.
On Friday, Abu Hamza, the cleric accused of tutoring Richard Reid before he tried to blow up a Paris-to-Miami jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoe, urged a crowd of 200 outside his former Finsbury Park mosque to embrace death and the "culture of martyrdom."
Though the British home secretary, David Blunkett, has sought to strip Abu Hamza of his British citizenship and deport him, the legal battle has dragged on for years while Abu Hamza keeps calling down the wrath of God.
Also this week, over Mr. Blunkett's vigorous objection, a 35-year-old Algerian held under emergency laws passed after Sept. 11 was released from Belmarsh Prison. The man, identified only as "G," suffered from severe mental illness, his lawyers told a special immigration appeals panel, which let him out of prison and put him under house arrest.
Mr. Blunkett insisted that that should not be the final judgment on a man already found by one court "to be a threat to life and liberty."
In an interview on the BBC over the weekend, Mr. Blunkett advocated a stronger deportation policy, initially focused on 12 foreign terror suspects held without charge since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Despite tougher antiterrorism laws, the police, prosecutors and intelligence chiefs across Europe say they are struggling to contain the openly seditious speech of Islamic extremists, some of whom, they say, have been inciting young men to suicidal violence since the 1990's.
One chapter in Sheik Omar's lectures these days is "The Psyche of Muslims for Suicide Bombing."
The authorities say that laws to protect religious expression and civil liberties have the result of limiting what they can do to stop hateful speech. In the case of foreigners, they say they are often left to seek deportation, a lengthy and uncertain process subject to legal appeals, when the suspect can keep inciting attacks.
That leaves the authorities to resort to less effective means, such as mouse-trapping Islamic radicals with immigration violations in hopes of making a deportation case stick. "In many countries, the laws are liberal and it's not easy," an official said.
At a mosque in Geneva, an imam recently exhorted his followers to "impose the will of Islam on the godless society of the West."
"It was quite virulent," said a senior official with knowledge of the sermon. "The imam was encouraging his followers to take over the godless society."
While such a sermon may be incitement, recruitment takes a more shadowy course, and is hard to detect, a senior antiterrorism official said. "Believers are appealed to in the mosques, but the real conversations take place in restaurants or cafes or private apartments," the official said.
While some clerics, like Abu Qatada — said to be the spiritual counselor of Mohamed Atta, who led the Sept. 11 hijacking team — remain in prison in Britain without charge, others like Sheik Omar, leader of a movement called Al Muhajiroun, carry on a robust ideological campaign.
"There is no case against me," Sheik Omar said in an interview. Referring to calls by members of Parliament that he be deported, he added, "but they are Jewish" and "they have been calling for that for years."
Among his ardent followers is Ishtiaq Alamgir, 24, who heads Al Muhajiroun in Luton and calls himself Sayful Islam, the sword of Islam. He says there are about 50 members here but exact numbers are secret.
Most days, he and a handful of his followers run a recruitment stand on Dunstable Road much to the chagrin of the Muslim elders of Luton.
Mainstream Muslims are outraged by the situation, saying the actions of a few are causing their communities to be singled out for surveillance and making the larger population distrustful of them.
Muhammad Sulaiman, a stalwart of the mainstream Central Mosque here, was penniless when he arrived from the Kashmiri frontier of Pakistan in 1956. He raised money to build the Central Mosque here and now leads a campaign to ban Al Muhajiroun radicals from the city's 10 mosques.
"This is show-off business," he says in accented English. "I don't want these kids in my mosque."
Other community leaders look to the government to do something, if only to help prevent the demonization of British Muslims, or "Islamophobia," as some here call it.
"I think these kids are being brainwashed by a few radical clerics," said Akhbar Dad Khan, another elder of the Central Mosque. He wants them prosecuted or deported. "We should be able to control this negativity," he said.
In Slough, Sheik Omar spent much of his time Thursday night regaling his young followers with the erotic delights of paradise — sweet kisses and the pleasures of bathing with scores of women — while he also preached the virtues of death in Islamic struggle as a ticket to paradise.
He spoke of terrorism as the new norm of cultural conflict, "the fashion of the 21st century," practiced as much by Tony Blair as by Al Qaeda.
"We may be caught up in the target as the people of Manhattan were," he told them.
And he warned Western leaders, "You may kill bin Laden, but the phenomenon, you cannot kill it — you cannot destroy it."
"Our Muslim brothers from abroad will come one day and conquer here and then we will live under Islam in dignity," he said.
Patrick E. Tyler reported from Luton, Slough and London and Don Van Natta Jr. from London. Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Germany.
The New York Times Magazine, April 25 2004
About 10 months after Jose Padilla disappeared into a naval brig in South Carolina, a Pentagon official appeared at his mother's workplace in Florida with a greeting card. When Estela Ortega Lebron saw the familiar pinched handwriting, she trembled, knowing, before even reading the card, that it was for real, the first evidence of her son's existence since he was seized by the American military in June 2002.
"In the name of God the merciful the mercy giver," Mr. Padilla wrote, "I have been allowed to write you a card and just letting you know I'm doing fine and in good health. Do not believe what is being said about me in the news it is untrue and I pray that we can have a reunion. Love your son Pucho." Pucho was Mr. Padilla's childhood nickname.
That card was the sum and substance of Mr. Padilla's communication with the outside world for about 21 months. Brooklyn-born and Chicago-bred, a Muslim convert of Puerto Rican descent, Mr. Padilla, 33, was first arrested at O'Hare International Airport in May 2002. A month later, President Bush took the extraordinary step of declaring him an "enemy combatant," and the military placed Mr. Padilla, whom the government accused of plotting a radiological "dirty bomb" attack, in solitary confinement.
Last month, more than a year after a federal judge ordered the government to permit Mr. Padilla to see his lawyers, the government relented. It did not allow a traditional attorney-client meeting, though. Military officials hovered and a videocamera recorded the encounter.
Find good additional links on the Post site regarding today's hearings. Excerpt:
The Bush administration's top lawyer encountered stiff resistance at the Supreme Court yesterday, as he urged the justices to side with President Bush in the first test of the executive branch's power to identify and imprison enemies in the war on terrorism.
Facing the court in oral arguments over the detention of al Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson dramatically reminded the court that "the United States is at war," that more than 10,000 troops are in Afghanistan, and that the country faces an "extraordinary threat."
But several justices asked questions that implied they doubted Olson's assertion that Bush, as commander in chief, may hold the suspects for interrogation at the base in Cuba as long as he deems necessary, without judicial oversight
washingtonpost.com
High Court Hears Detention Cases
Policy on Terror Suspects Challenged
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A03
The Bush administration's top lawyer encountered stiff resistance at the Supreme Court yesterday, as he urged the justices to side with President Bush in the first test of the executive branch's power to identify and imprison enemies in the war on terrorism.
Facing the court in oral arguments over the detention of al Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson dramatically reminded the court that "the United States is at war," that more than 10,000 troops are in Afghanistan, and that the country faces an "extraordinary threat."
But several justices asked questions that implied they doubted Olson's assertion that Bush, as commander in chief, may hold the suspects for interrogation at the base in Cuba as long as he deems necessary, without judicial oversight.
"It seems rather contrary to an idea of a Constitution with three branches that the executive would be free to do whatever they want -- whatever they want without a check," Justice Stephen G. Breyer said.
Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy, moderate conservatives whose votes often decide close cases, questioned the administration's reading of the 1950 precedent on which it based its case.
Yesterday's hearing focused on two consolidated cases: Rasul v. Bush, No. 03-334, and al Odah v. Rumsfeld, No. 03-343, which were brought by family members of 16 British, Australian and Kuwaiti citizens currently or formerly held in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. The detainees were not charged with crimes or permitted direct contact with lawyers, and attorneys for their families call the prison a U.S.-created "lawless enclave."
Guantanamo houses about 600 detainees from more than two dozen countries and has turned into a major international issue. Human rights groups and foreign governments have taken the Bush administration to task for refusing to grant detainees legal process or declare them prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
The administration has said that the naval base is still formally a part of Cuba, and thus outside U.S. court jurisdiction. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to members of an irregular force, the administration says -- but it has promised that the detainees' treatment will be consistent with the accord.
In response to diplomatic pressure and military determinations that some detainees are no longer dangerous, the Bush administration has released 146 in the past two years, including the two British citizens involved in this case, though 12 of those released are in custody in their home countries. The administration has named six detainees for trial before a military tribunal.
But although the court's eventual ruling could have broad impact on the U.S. image abroad, the issue before the court is relatively narrow. The question is whether the Guantanamo detainees have a right to ask a federal court to order the president to give them a hearing -- not whether the courts must do so.
Even if the Supreme Court sides with them in this case, the detainees would face a long bout of litigation before winning release or major changes in their confinement.
Acknowledging the strong public interest in the case, the court, which bars live radio and television coverage, permitted the release of an audio recording of the one-hour argument after it concluded.
What the court's worldwide audience heard was an intense discussion, with justices often interrupting one another to get in their questions. Inside the courtroom, the justices could be seen leaning forward, listening intently to the lawyers' answers.
The Bush administration won the case in the lower courts, so it was already something of a setback for the administration that the Supreme Court required it to defend its policies again.
If Olson sought to set the tone by invoking the continuing threat to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Justice John Paul Stevens seemed equally determined to thwart him.
As soon as Olson mentioned the war, Stevens -- a decorated veteran of the Pacific Theater in World War II -- interjected, asking whether Olson would make the same arguments if the war were over. When Olson conceded that he would, Stevens countered: "So the existence of the war is really irrelevant to the legal issue."
Olson then moved on to his main contention: that the Guantanamo prison is outside the jurisdiction of the federal courts.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1950 that foreign prisoners held outside the United States in connection with a war are not covered by a federal law that entitles prisoners to challenge illegal detention by suing for a writ of habeas corpus, he noted. And, he added, since the 1903 lease that granted the United States "complete jurisdiction and control" at Guantanamo kept "ultimate sovereignty" for Cuba, the prison there is outside the United States.
But several justices questioned Olson's reading of the 1950 precedent, known as Johnson v. Eisentrager. They implied that the case was limited to its different facts: The prisoners then were tried and convicted of war crimes, whereas today's Guantanamo detainees have not been.
O'Connor noted that the court in 1950 had said "they have had a trial under the military tribunal and they have no rights that could be granted at the end of the day, and no mention of the habeas statute."
Later, Kennedy implied that Olson had contradicted his own argument when he said that U.S. citizens held at Guantanamo might have a right to sue for habeas corpus but noncitizens would not.
"If the citizen can say that he is a prisoner held under the authority of the United States in Guantanamo, why couldn't a noncitizen say the same thing?" Kennedy asked.
Olson replied that the court had appeared to recognize "more protection for citizens" in Johnson v. Eisentrager.
But Kennedy also pressed retired federal judge John J. Gibbons, who was arguing for the detainees, to define the limits in his argument, asking whether he would be willing to give court access even to combatants at the time of their capture on the battlefield. Gibbons struggled to answer, ultimately conceding that "habeas corpus . . . has never run to the battlefield."
For most of the rest of the hearing, the court seemed divided along its usual left-right lines. The four more liberal justices -- Breyer, Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- asked questions that suggested strong doubts about the Bush administration's claims, and two of the most conservative justices, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, seemed more supportive. Justice Clarence Thomas, as is his custom, remained silent.
A decision in the cases is expected by July.
New York Times, Op/Ed David Cole
WASHINGTON — Today the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether the United States government can detain foreign nationals held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as "enemy combatants" without charge and without hearings. Next week the court will hear arguments in similar cases involving American citizens. Many consider the detention of citizens to be more dubious legally. But from a constitutional standpoint, citizenship should not matter.
April 20, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
America's Prisoners, American Rights
By DAVID COLE
WASHINGTON — Today the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether the United States government can detain foreign nationals held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as "enemy combatants" without charge and without hearings. Next week the court will hear arguments in similar cases involving American citizens. Many consider the detention of citizens to be more dubious legally. But from a constitutional standpoint, citizenship should not matter.
All three branches of government have treated citizenship as a central issue. The Bush administration says that it can hold the foreign detainees, most of whom were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, without any legal limitations because they are noncitizens held outside American borders. As such, it argues, they have no constitutional rights and no standing in American courts to challenge their detentions.
Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court seemed to adopt a similar view when it upheld the indefinite detentions of a German woman and a Hungarian man at Ellis Island on the basis of secret evidence that they could neither see nor confront. Because they were foreigners who had not been admitted to the United States, the court said, whatever process Congress had provided them was due process. For its part, Congress in 1971 barred executive detention without explicit statutory authorization — but applied the prohibition only to citizens.
These suggestions that noncitizens have less right to be free than citizens are ill advised. Some provisions of the Constitution do explicitly limit their protections to United States citizens — the right to vote and the right to run for Congress or president, for example. The Bill of Rights, however, does not distinguish between citizens and noncitizens. It extends its protections in universal language, to "persons," "people" or "the accused." The framers considered these rights to be God-given natural rights, and God didn't give them only to persons holding American passports.
The human-rights revolution of the last 50 years has similarly identified fundamental rights like the right not to be arbitrarily detained as extending to all regardless of nationality. Human-rights treaties ground these guarantees in "human dignity," and Americans have no monopoly on that.
When one considers the specific right at issue in the enemy combatant cases — the right not to be locked up without a fair process — there is also no good reason to differentiate between citizens and foreigners. From the prisoner's standpoint, every human being has the same interest in not being locked up erroneously or arbitrarily. And from the government's perspective, the security interest in detaining terrorists is the same whether they are citizens or not.
Every person deprived of his liberty under the authority of the United States government should have a right to due process. What process is due may differ depending on the circumstances of detention — whether on the battlefield or far from it. But the nationality of the detainee ought not affect the calculus.
Finally, there is also good practical reason not to distinguish between the basic rights of citizens and foreign nationals. While the federal government has often introduced security initiatives by singling out foreigners, it has just as often sought to extend those tactics to citizens later. The suppression of subversive speech, for example, and race-based detention began as anti-alien measures. But they did not end there.
It used to take years to extend these tactics to American citizens. But things are speeding up. Today the Bush administration will defend its treatment of the Guantánamo detainees on the grounds that they are foreigners who do not deserve American legal protections. Next week, it will argue that it has just as much latitude to detain American citizens. The slippery slope has never been more slick.
David Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown, is the author of "Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism."
Starting today, the Supreme Court will begin to consider whether the executive branch, in the name of fighting terror, can restrict civil liberties. The court will hear arguments in three cases concerning detainees -- including two U.S. citizens -- held by the U.S. government indefinitely, without charge, and without access to counsel. The court's decisions, due by June 30, will define the scope of presidential authority in the war on terror and establish the balance of power between the executive and the judiciary in matters of national security.
April 20, 2004
Balancing Act
Starting today, the Supreme Court will begin to consider whether the executive branch, in the name of fighting terror, can restrict civil liberties. The court will hear arguments in three cases concerning detainees -- including two U.S. citizens -- held by the U.S. government indefinitely, without charge, and without access to counsel. The court's decisions, due by June 30, will define the scope of presidential authority in the war on terror and establish the balance of power between the executive and the judiciary in matters of national security.
The cases involve two types of captives in the war on terrorism: foreigners who were caught on a battlefield abroad and held without charge for more than two years at Guantanamo Bay; and two U.S. citizens who are being confined indefinitely in a military brig in Charleston, S.C. The administration labels all of the captives "enemy combatants" and justifies their treatment on grounds of national security.
The first case, to be heard today, involves the early 600 men in custody at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay without being charged or having access to lawyers or a legal process. The families of 12 Kuwaiti and two Australian prisoners are trying to challenge the legality of the detentions in U.S. courts. The legal question at issue is whether U.S. courts have jurisdiction to consider the challenges to the detentions. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that federal judges have no power to hear the claims because the men are being detained outside the USA. Lawyers for the men claim that the precedent used by the D.C. court is invalid and that the U.S. exercised effective sovereignty over Guantanamo.
The other two cases involve Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, two U.S. citizens held indefinitely in a military brig in South Carolina. Both cases will be argued on April 28. Padilla is suspected of plotting with al Qaeda to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb," and was captured at O’Hare airport in Chicago in May 2002. Here the question is whether the president has the authority to designate a U.S. citizen who was arrested on American soil as an "enemy combatant," and to hold him without access to a lawyer or the courts. Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, where government lawyers say he was fighting with the Taliban. The question in his case is whether the president can order a U.S. citizen detained indefinitely without giving him access to lawyers or a hearing, based on a battlefield capture.
It's a sign of the power the Court that the administration has loosened it’s hold on the detainees since the Supremes agreed to hear the cases. Some 75 terrorism suspects, including three juveniles, have been released since mid-November, and the Pentagon announced that the circumstances of each Guantanamo detainee will get an annual review, helping to blunt criticism that prisoners are being held in total legal limbo. In addition, Padilla and Hamdi have both been allowed to speak with lawyers.
The administration defends it’s classification of the detainees as necessary in time of war. Indeed, most of the administration's arguments depend upon the court's accepting that a state of war is an accurate description of the U.S. government's campaign against terrorism. In its brief for the Hamdi case, the administration argues, "In our constitutional system, the responsibility for waging war is committed to the political branches."
In all three cases, the administration's lawyers suggest that in this national climate of fear over terrorism, national security warrants that executive authority take precedence over judicial, and leaves no room for "second-guessing" or "micromanaging". Ultimately, the administration argues, these are matters of military, not civilian, concern.
But many-- not least the detainees -- take exception to the government’s explanation for the curtailment of their liberties. Besides those directly involved in the suits, several other parties have filed briefs in defense of the detainees, including civil rights and civil liberties organizations, the libertarian Cato Institute, and the British parliament on behalf of the British subjects held at Guantanamo.
The gist of the argument of these groups is two-fold. First, that because the government, in not allowing courts to review enemy combatant status, is violating the right of "habeas corpus," the "right to judicial protection against lawless incarceration by executive authorities." Second, that the administration’s actions violate the obligations of international law.
Bush is not the first president to suspend civil liberties in the name of national security. FDR authorized the wartime detention of more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent, which the justices upheld in 1944 in Korematsu v. United States. Later, the U.S. issued a formal apology to those interned. But as the America Civil Liberties Union's legal director, Steven R. Shapiro told the Boston Globe, "Too often in the past, claims of executive power have been allowed to trump the Constitution. History has judged those decisions harshly."
Bush may be (or likes to see himself as) a war president, but he also needs to abide by the laws. The Christian Science Monitor:
"After Sept. 11, Congress gave President Bush the authority to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against terrorists, leaving it up to him to decide who is a terrorist. That authority lies in the Constitution's Article II, giving the commander in chief the power to conduct armed conflict. But the Supreme Court cannot easily overturn a tradition that goes back to 14th-century English law in which the state must assure a judge that it has given due process to a detained person. To do so would be to demolish a key plank of the Bill of Rights."
The New York Times condemns the administration’s actions:
"Legal arguments aside, the Guantánamo policies are a tragic mistake. They are being followed closely abroad, where they are greatly harming America's reputation for fairness. And — as a group of retired American military officers argue in a friend-of-the-court brief — they will come back to haunt us when Americans are taken captive."
- Deborah Ziff
President Bush traveled to Buffalo today to continue his drive for an extension of provisions of the USA Patriot Act that are set to expire next year.
In what was billed by the White House as a "conversation," Mr. Bush told an audience of political supporters, firefighters and police officers: "The Patriot Act needs to be renewed and the Patriot Act needs to be enhanced. That's what we're talking about."
It was, he said, essential for "the security of our country."
April 20, 2004
President, in Buffalo, Continues Push to Extend Patriot Act
By TERENCE NEILAN
President Bush traveled to Buffalo today to continue his drive for an extension of provisions of the USA Patriot Act that are set to expire next year.
In what was billed by the White House as a "conversation," Mr. Bush told an audience of political supporters, firefighters and police officers: "The Patriot Act needs to be renewed and the Patriot Act needs to be enhanced. That's what we're talking about."
It was, he said, essential for "the security of our country."
Buffalo was chosen for Mr. Bush's appearance because federal prosecutors have tied the provisions of the act to the arrest and conviction in Buffalo last year of the group known as the Lackawanna Six, Americans of Yemeni descent who briefly attended Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.
"Those who criticize the Patriot Act must listen to those folks on the front line of defending America," the president said. "The Patriot Act defends our liberty, is what it does, under the Constitution of the United States."
He added, "I think America is now more secure, and we're working to make it more secure."
The provisions of the act set to expire include those making it easier for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to share information about suspected terrorists, expanding the use of wiretaps and search warrants and allowing the government to track who is sending e-mail to or receiving it from suspected terrorists.
Civil libertarians in particular say the act went too far in sacrificing individual rights. Even some Republicans, who generally support Mr. Bush's antiterror drive, say the act needs to be carefully reviewed.
They include Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who gained Mr. Bush's support on Monday in his own re-election campaign.
The legislation has become a hotly debated issue in Washington, and neither the House nor the Senate is scheduled to consider extending the expiring provisions at any time soon.
Among those who joined Mr. Bush today was Pete Ahearn, special agent in charge of the Buffalo field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who said that before the Patriot Act "we were fighting with one arm tied behind our back."
Later Mr. Bush said: "It's one thing to protect our embassies, and we work hard to do so. But now a threat overseas could end up being a threat to the homeland."
As Condoleezza Rice prepares for her long-awaited testimony before the commission investigating al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11th attacks, a look at Israel's experience with terrorism is instructive. It may shock Americans to learn that Israeli leaders freely admit that the growth of Hamas was partly a tragedy of their own making. Israel made a conscious decision to allow the Islamist movement to grow in the West Bank and Gaza in the early 1980s, hoping that this would undermine support for Yasser Arafat's PLO. "In retrospect we made a mistake," former Defense Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer told the daily Maariv last week.
The Israeli military administration in the territories had prohibited the PLO from operating openly, but it was instructed to allow the Islamists the freedom to establish a large-scale religious-welfare-political infrastructure. The Islamist welfare effort, which gave Hamas a claim on the hearts and minds of Palestinians living under occupation, was, of course, driven by an agenda even more poisonous than the PLO's to Israel's interest. But, says Ben Eliezer, "by the time we realized what was happening, it was too late."
BERLIN, April 7 -- A Moroccan man who is the only person ever convicted of aiding the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers was freed by a court in Hamburg Wednesday pending a retrial.
Mounir Motassadeq, 30, walked from the courthouse one month after an appeals court panel ruled that his first trial had been compromised by the judges' failure to adequately consider the U.S. government's refusal to provide evidence from an al Qaeda operative it holds in secret custody.
ACLU:
WASHINGTON – A member of the military, a retired Presbyterian minister and a college student are among seven U.S. citizens who have joined the first nationwide, class-action challenge to the government's “No-Fly” list filed today by the American Civil Liberties Union.
“This case is about innocent people who found out that their government considers them potential terrorists,” said Reginald T. Shuford, an ACLU senior staff attorney who is lead counsel in the case. “For our clients and thousands like them, getting on a plane means repeated delays and the stigma of being singled out as a security threat in front of their family, their fellow passengers and the flight crew,” Shuford added. “What's worse, these passengers have no idea why they have been placed on the No-Fly list and no way to clear their names.”
The New York Times (March 31, 2004)
Op/Ed by Robert M. Gates.
COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — Osama bin Laden and other terrorists are on the brink of achieving an unanticipated victory, one that could have long-term consequences for the United States.
Over the decades, millions of young people from other countries have come to America to study at our colleges and universities. Many have remained here to start companies, to keep us at the forefront of scientific and technological discovery, to teach in our schools and to enrich our culture. Many others have returned home to help build market economies and to lead political reform.
After 9/11, for perfectly understandable reasons, the federal government made it much tougher to get a visa to come to the United States. Sadly, the unpredictability and delays that characterize the new system — and, too often, the indifference or hostility of those doing the processing — have resulted over the last year or so in a growing number of the world's brightest young people deciding to remain at home or go to other countries for their college or graduate education. Thousands of legitimate international students are being denied entry into the United States or are giving up in frustration and anger.
At 90 percent of American colleges and universities, applications from international students for fall 2004 are down, according to a survey by the Council of Graduate Schools that was released earlier this month. According to a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, applications from China have fallen by 76 percent, while those from India have dropped by 58 percent. Applications to research universities from prospective international graduate students are down by at least 25 percent overall; here at Texas A&M, international student applications have fallen by 38 percent from last year.
Not surprisingly, universities in Australia, Britain, France and elsewhere are taking advantage of our barriers and are aggressively recruiting these students. According to the Chronicle, foreign student enrollment in Australia is up 16.5 percent over last year; Chinese enrollment there has risen by 20 percent.
Why should we be concerned? For starters, it is a sad reality that relatively small numbers of American students pursue graduate degrees in engineering and science. As a result, the research efforts at many American universities depend on international graduate students. They do much of the laboratory work that leads to new discoveries.
More troubling is the impact that declining foreign enrollments could have in the war on terrorism. To defeat terrorism, our global military, law enforcement and intelligence capacities must be complemented with positive initiatives and programs aimed at the young people in developing nations who will guide their countries in the future. No policy has proved more successful in making friends for the United States, during the cold war and since, than educating students from abroad at our colleges and universities.
I take a back seat to no one in concern about our security at home in an age of terrorism. I am now the president of Texas A&M, but I spent nearly 30 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, ultimately serving as director under President George H. W. Bush. I learned during that time that protecting our security requires more than defensive measures; we have to win the war of ideas, too. For this reason, we simply cannot tolerate a visa process that fails to differentiate quickly and accurately between legitimate scholars and students — and individuals who may pose genuine security risks.
Senior officials in the White House and in the Departments of State and Homeland Security understand the importance of solving the visa processing problem. But carrying out post-9/11 visa policies and procedures has been badly hamstrung by a lack of resources, unrealistic deadlines and shortcomings in scanning technologies and background checks. American universities have had a difficult time tracking foreign student applicants as they move through the screening process — and there are just too many people in visa offices who are indifferent to the importance of these students to America.
Universities are willing partners in strengthening homeland security. This is not the 1960's. We are working with the government to keep track of international students. But averting a serious defeat for the United States — and serious problems for all its research universities — will require urgent action by Congress and the administration. Beyond the risk to economic, scientific and political interests, we risk something more: alienating our allies of the future.
Robert M. Gates, the director of central intelligence from 1991 to 1993, is president of Texas A&M University.