The Village Voice: A Citizen Shorn of All Rights by Nat Hentoff

The government has taken the position that with no meaningful judicial review, an American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely without charges or counsel on the government's say-so. —American Bar Association Task Force on Treatment of Enemy Combatants, Preliminary Report, August 8, 2002

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. —James Madison, Federalist Papers, 47

Yaser Esam Hamdi, born in Louisiana of Saudi parents, was captured by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan. He was transferred to Camp X-Ray in the Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba. When his American captors realized Hamdi is an American citizen, he was taken, in April 2002, to a naval station brig in Norfolk, Virginia, where he has since been held without any charges or trial, without access to his public defender, and without being able to see his family or anyone else. This American citizen, incommunicado and stripped of his constitutional rights, has been put in this condition by direct order of the president of the United States.

On October 24, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, and 18 other human rights groups, plus a coalition of 139 law professors, submitted an amicus brief to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals charging that "the detention of American citizen Yaser Esam Hamdi is unconstitutional."

Reading the brief, keep in mind that the Bush administration has plans to set up "enemy combatant" detention facilities for other American citizens (Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2002).

In stark language, the brief goes on to say that "the government's position is that the president has complete discretion to suspend the application of the Bill of Rights and the writ of habeas corpus [which requires the government to prove the legality of a person's imprisonment] to American citizens on American soil, without the authority of Congress or the courts."

The Bush administration has stated this position in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (Fourth Circuit, July 12, 2002). The government also maintains that this American citizen, Hamdi, can be held indefinitely.

This case appears to be the first in American jurisprudence where an American citizen has been held incommunicado and subjected to an indefinite detention in the continental United States without charges . . . and without access to a lawyer." A George Bush contribution to American history!

Anytime a citizen's rights are taken away it means they are closer to taking your rights away.