ASHINGTON, June 20 — A court-appointed lawyer for an American-born detainee today challenged the government's claim that it could hold him without giving him access to a lawyer or charging him with anything.Posted on 06/20/2002 10:48:48 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
ASHINGTON, June 20 — A court-appointed lawyer for an American-born detainee today challenged the government's claim that it could hold him without giving him access to a lawyer or charging him with anything.
In a broad assertion of presidential authority that could ultimately be tested in the Supreme Court, the government said in court papers on Wednesday that anyone it designated an "enemy combatant" did not have to be provided the legal protections accorded most American citizens. Further it said, the courts have no authority to interfere with such decisions.
The case involves Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was born in Louisiana and raised in Saudi Arabia. He was taken into custody on the Afghanistan battlefield, sent to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and from there moved in April to the naval brig in Norfolk, Va. He has been in isolation ever since, with no charges against him and no access to a lawyer. A federal district judge has ruled that he should be allowed that access, but the government has appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va.
In a brief filed with the appeals court today, his court-appointed public defender, Frank W. Dunham Jr., urged that the government's designation of Mr. Hamdi as an enemy combatant be overturned. The brief asked that Mr. Dunham and Robert J. Wagner, assistant federal public defender, be allowed to meet with Mr. Hamdi immediately.
The executive branch, Mr. Dunham said, "does not have the authority to detain an American citizen incommunicado and to unilaterally withdraw from the courts the power to inquire into the propriety of his detention."
The brief said the Justice Department had submitted no evidence that Mr. Hamdi had ties to any terrorist organization, and no finding that he was in fact an enemy combatant.
It also asked that the court hear oral arguments, given the importance of the case. The government's appeal, the public defenders said, "raises significant constitutional questions relating to the power of the executive branch of the United States government to detain American citizens indefinitely without permitting access to counsel or to the federal courts."
Gee, I guess the fact that the guy was fighting with the Taliban against the US doesn't count. He was just running down to the local Circle K in Mazar-e-shariff to get a pack of cigarettes when some guy in a turban thrust an AK-47 into his hands and pointed it at those clean shaven guys in tan cammies.
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