General Alarm at New Detention Law

General Alarm at New Detention Law
By ADAM KLASFELD – 05 January, 2012 – Stop The FBI

Human rights groups and civil libertarians are skeptical of White House assurances that President Obama’s signing of the National Defense Authorization Act will not lead to the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012 writes a $662 billion check to the Pentagon, in a 500-plus-page document that grants the executive branch the power to indefinitely detain any person it accuses of being a terrorist without charge or trial. President Obama signed the bill on New Year’s Eve.

During congressional debate, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who co-sponsored the bill, said the Obama administration instructed him to keep U.S. citizens subject to the detention statutes. In a signing statement on Dec. 31, Obama claimed to oppose these provisions, and expressed “serious reservations” about indefinite detention without trial, an authority he vowed not to enforce on U.S. citizens. “The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it,” Obama wrote in the signing statement. “In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists. … Moreover, I want to clarify that my administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.”

Amnesty International ridiculed his comments, stating that “Trust Me” does not mitigate the law’s “dangerous” expansion of executive power. “Once any government has the authority to hold people indefinitely, the risk is that it can be almost impossible to rein such power in. President Obama has failed to take the one action – a veto – that would have blocked the dangerous provisions in the NDAA,” Amnesty said in a statement. “In so doing, he has allowed human rights to be further undermined and given Al Qaeda a propaganda victory.” In a telephone interview, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights told Courthouse News that the NDAA will keep Guantanamo detainees already cleared for release behind bars by forcing the Secretary of Defense to “ensure that someone who is released cannot hurt the U.S. at any time in the future.” “You can see how that is a metaphysical impossibility,” said Wells Dixon, who represents Guantanamo detainees. …more