Posts tagged Geneva Convention

The Hamdan’s Tale

6
1 year ago
by Monotreme in ,

Salim Ahmed Ham­dan. Source: New York Times.

Two cases related to the Guan­tanamo Bay detainees and their treat­ment are mak­ing their way through the court sys­tem now and may be reviewed by the Supreme Court soon.

The first, Jose Padilla v. John Yoo, was the sub­ject of Michael’s arti­cle this morning.

The sec­ond case is being heard (or maybe not, see below) by the D.C. Cir­cuit Court and may well move to the Supreme Court next term.

Salim Ahmed Ham­dan is a Yemeni national who, intel­li­gence offi­cials say, served as a dri­ver for Osama bin Laden. He was detained by Afghan forces in Novem­ber 2001 and held with other sus­pected ter­ror­ists at Guan­tanamo Bay.

In 2006, his case (Ham­dan v. Rums­feld) was heard by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the sys­tem of mil­i­tary tri­bunals cre­ated by Con­gress was uncon­sti­tu­tional because it did not prop­erly fol­low the Geneva Con­ven­tion. The present case is unre­lated to the first; the only com­mon fea­ture is that it fea­tures the same peti­tioner. (more…)

Tortured Reasoning

5
2 years ago
by Michael Weiss in

Update: Thomas Nach­bar at Slate pub­lished a closely related arti­cle this afternoon.

The Jack Bauer approach to interrogation

The United States fre­quently holds itself up as a model for the world’s nations to emu­late. Free­dom, jus­tice, democracy…all are used as self-​​applied adjec­tives. From Obama’s inau­gu­ra­tion speech:

Our secu­rity emanates from the just­ness of our cause; the force of our exam­ple; the tem­per­ing qual­i­ties of humil­ity and restraint.

We tell our­selves that we are dis­tinct from despotic nations, because we fol­low the rule of law and jus­tice. And yet, when we vio­late those laws, we seek out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for those actions.

(more…)

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