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- Wednesday, 12 June 2002 -

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Another step towards presidential dictatorship
BUSH ORDERS U.S. CITIZEN HELD INDEFINITELY BY MILITARY
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News & Analysis: North America
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/bomb-j12.shtml
By Patrick Martin

A New York-born man of Puerto Rican descent has been jailed indefinitely by
the Bush administration in a military brig in South Carolina, in an
unprecedented assertion of executive power. The case of Jose Padilla--or as
he now calls himself, Abdullah al Muhajir--has the most ominous
implications for democratic rights in the United States.

The federal government has seized a US citizen and locked him up for an
unlimited period of time on the say-so of the president, without the
sanction of any court and in defiance of such elementary legal principles
as the presumption of innocence and the right of habeas corpus.

Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the arrest of Padilla/Muhajir June
10 at an extraordinary press conference held in Moscow, where he was
engaged in a long-planned visit to meet with Russian police and security
officials. Calling the arrest "a significant step forward in the war on
terrorism," Ashcroft declared, "We have captured a known terrorist who was
exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or
'dirty bomb,' in the United States."

This statement combined gross distortions with outright lies. Muhajir was
actually "captured" nearly five weeks ago, on May 8, when he arrived at
O'Hare Airport in Chicago, on his way back from an extended stay in Europe,
the Middle East and South Asia.

While Muhajir apparently converted to a fundamentalist form of Islam
several years ago, when he married an Egyptian woman, the government has
not yet presented any evidence that he was a supporter of Al Qaeda and
Osama bin Laden, let alone engaged in any terrorist activity. In fact, the
Bush administration arranged his transfer from the Metropolitan
Correctional Facility in New York City to the US Navy brig in South
Carolina so that it would not be obliged to produce such evidence. All that
has been made public are the unsupported assertions of Ashcroft and other
government officials, parroted obediently by the American media.

It may be that Muhajir became a political supporter of bin Laden and
Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, but the claims that the Bush
administration has preempted a major terrorist attack on the United States
are not only unproven, but thoroughly dubious.

After Ashcroft's initial and highly sensationalized presentation of the
case, other administration officials were compelled to qualify his remarks.
While the attorney general claimed the US government had "disrupted an
unfolding terrorist plot," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a
news conference, "There was not an actual plan. We stopped this man in the
initial planning stages." Government officials subsequently acknowledged
that no materials for building a "dirty bomb" had been assembled, and no
actual target had been selected.

In a heavy-handed effort to stampede public opinion, Ashcroft declared that
Muhajir was a key operative in an Al Qaeda plan to detonate a radiological
weapon--a conventional explosive device with a wrapper of radioactive
material--which could cause "mass death and injury." This statement became
the basis for sensationalized media coverage, although experts in the field
told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that such a device could
produce serious long-term contamination, but would actually cause
relatively few casualties.

Ashcroft said that Muhajir was in Pakistan "researching radiological
dispersion devices," although how he could accomplish that with only a
grade-school education and little knowledge of the local languages is
unclear, to say the least. Previous US warnings about Al Qaeda access to
nuclear technology have focused on former Soviet scientists and weapons
technicians, not ex-members of city street gangs, as the likely conduits.

Even more inexplicable is the decision to arrest Muhajir as soon as he
arrived in the United States. According Ashcroft and his aides, at the time
they learned of Muhajir/Padilla's role as an Al Qaeda operative, he had
been jailed in Pakistan for violating immigration laws. The Bush
administration arranged for his release. US intelligence agencies then
monitored his travel from Pakistan, through Zurich, Switzerland and Egypt
to the United States. FBI agents were on board the plane during the last
leg of the journey and arrested him as he was going through Customs at
O'Hare.

Ashcroft was not asked an obvious question. Why, if Muhajir could be
tracked from continent to continent, was he arrested as soon as he set foot
on US soil? If he was such a key figure in a plot to kill thousands of
Americans, why didn't the authorities continue to follow him, in order to
find his collaborators and co-conspirators inside the country?

Rather than a terrorist mastermind, Muhajir is far more likely to be a
low-level sympathizer of the Islamic fundamentalists--if even that--whose
arrest has been seized on to boost Bush's political standing and refurbish
the image of the intelligence agencies.

The announcement is suspiciously convenient in its timing, coming as the
Bush administration is staggering under the impact of revelations that the
CIA and FBI ignored or suppressed warnings of the September 11 terrorist
attacks. Ashcroft was at pains to point to the cooperation of the two US
intelligence agencies in his statement in Moscow.

A chilling legal precedent

Legal considerations were a major factor in Muhajir's transfer to military
custody. He has not been charged with any crime. The government justified
his arrest and incarceration by calling him a material witness in the
federal investigation into September 11--the legal ploy that has been used
to detain hundreds of Muslim immigrants over the past nine months.

A federal district judge in Manhattan had scheduled a secret hearing for
June 11 and seemed prepared to order the government to charge Muhajir or
release him. The alternative, devised by the Justice Department in
consultation with the Pentagon, was to put him out of reach, at least
temporarily, of the federal court system.

This process was conducted in a secret and politically chilling fashion.
President Bush issued an executive order, in his capacity as commander in
chief, declaring Muhajir an "enemy combatant who poses a serious and
continued threat to the American people and our national security." The
prisoner was taken from his New York prison cell, put on a government plane
and flown to Charleston, South Carolina to a US Navy facility. Muhajir's
own lawyer, Donna Newman of New York City, was not informed of his transfer
and has been denied access to him.

Justice Department officials cited two World War II-era Supreme Court
decisions as the legal basis for the presidential order to place Muhajir in
military custody. The two cases involved US citizens of German and Italian
descent who served as saboteurs or soldiers for the Axis powers. However,
these cases occurred in the context of a formal declaration of war against
Germany and Japan, passed by Congress. No such constitutionally mandated
declaration has been passed to authorize the present "war on terrorism." In
both cases, moreover, the prisoners were placed on trial--one before a
military tribunal, the other before a court martial. In the case of
Muhajir, however, there is to be no adversary proceeding of any kind, but
rather indefinite detention until the end of the "war on terror," which
Bush administration spokesmen have said may go on for decades.

The open-ended and unilateral character of Muhajir's detention has sparked
protests from civil liberties organizations, which have pointed out that
the government power asserted here could be used against any American
citizen.

Even the Washington Post, which has backed virtually all of the repressive
measures of the Bush administration since September 11, wrote an opposing
editorial, warning, "the government's actions in this latest case cut
against basic elements of life under the rule of law." The Post continued:
"If its positions are correct, nothing would prevent the president--even in
the absence of a formal declaration of war--from designating any American
as an enemy combatant. Without proving the correctness of the charge before
a court, the military could then detain that person forever. And having
done so, it could prevent that detainee from hiring a lawyer to argue that
the government, in fact, has it all wrong. If that's the case, nobody's
constitutional rights are safe."

But the Washington Post, like the rest of corporate-controlled media, fails
to point out the blatant contradiction between the dictatorial measures of
the Bush administration and its claim to be fighting a war in defense of
"freedom." In reality, the unprecedented assault on democratic rights being
carried out by the Bush administration is the domestic face of the eruption
of US militarism internationally.

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