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Dec-21-2011 19:27printcomments

Americans will be transferred to foreign prisons under Indefinite Detention act

“These provisions are inconsistent with the liberties and freedoms that are at the core of the system our Founders established...” Senator Al Franken.

Detention Act will imprison Americans abroad
Detention Act will imprison Americans abroad

(MOSCOW RT) - If you’re upset that congressional approval of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 can send you away to military prisons and be tortured in America, don’t worry — it could be worse.

The US could send you somewhere else.

No, really. They could. And they can. Anywhere else, too. Really.

While the bill that left Capitol Hill last week and awaits authorization from US President Barack Obama allows for the United States to indefinitely detain and torture American citizens suspected of aiding enemy forces, one provision in the bill specifies that that detention doesn’t necessarily have to occur domestically — nor does it have to be in a foreign prison run by the US.

The ongoing detention of foreign terror suspects at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has been a hot topic since the War on Terror began, with American military authorities torturing could-be criminals without ever bringing them to trial. An exposé years earlier on the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq revealed how American troops were subjecting detainees to disgusting, inhumane conditions; conditions which left some dead without ever going to trial. While Abu Ghraib has since been shut down, Guantanamo Bay continues to hold suspected criminals despite a promise to Obama to shut it down.

When the commander-in-chief inks his name to NDAA FY2012, Americans can be on their way to the same torture cells that have kept al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked terrorists for the last decade. It’s now been revealed, however, that US citizens and anyone suspected of a crime against America can be sent all over the world.

Under the legislation, the president has the power to transfer suspected terrorists "to the custody or control of the person's country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity."

China? Sure. Iran? Why not! North Korea? That’s a possibility too. David Glazier, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, tells Mother Jones that this was an authority that the president has had before, but only under the new NDAA is the legislation endorsed and insured that it could be applied to Americans.

"If the president could lawfully transfer a German prisoner of war to a foreign country, then in theory he could do the same thing with an American prisoner of war," Glazier says.

Under the Feinstein Amendment imposed under NDAA FY2012, the Democratic senator from California proposed a law which would not change “existing law” with regards to detaining Americans. As Mother Jones notes, however, the jury is still out on what exactly “existing law” is when it comes to the topic, with those suspected of hostilities against America already being imprisoned without trial — citizen and otherwise. Both US-born Bradley Manning has been under military watch, isolation and torture for nearly two years, and the same has applied to a countless number of suspected terrorists at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

Al Franken, a Democrat senator from Minnesota, wrote in an op-ed last week that the provisions put in NDAA such as Feinstein Amendment were enough for some lawmakers to sign onto the legislation, but he said the final draft was still “simply unacceptable.”

“These provisions are inconsistent with the liberties and freedoms that are at the core of the system our Founders established. And while I did in fact vote for an earlier version of the legislation, I did so with the hope that the final version would be significantly improved. That didn't happen, and so I could not support the final bill,” wrote Franken.

Special thanks to Russia TV

http://rt.com/usa/news/foreign-ndaa-suspected-us-367/?mid=55




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Brandt December 23, 2011 2:07 pm (Pacific time)

The NDAA only goes to further stifle our Constitutional Rights without the approval of the Americans, just as the Patriot Act was adopted WITHOUT public approval or vote just weeks after the events of 9/11. A mere 3 criminal charges of terrorism a year are attributed to this act, which is mainly used for no-knock raids leading to drug-related arrests without proper cause for search and seizure. The laws are simply a means to spy on our own citizens and to detain and torture dissidents without trial or a right to council. You can read much more about living in this Orwellian society of fear and see my visual response to these measures on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/09/living-in-society-of-fear-ten-years.html


Stephen Voss December 22, 2011 11:43 pm (Pacific time)

The NDAA drastically expands the government’s detention authority. We may be viewing the end of the dream of 1776.

For two reasons. (1) The NDAA opens the door to indefinite detention of just about anyone the President – this President but of course any future President – personally thinks he has reason to detain. Until he declares the war on terror is over. With no chance to defend yourself. (2) This authority goes beyond anything that current law now gives him.

Advocates of the NDAA say that under current law, President Obama already claims the authority to detain exactly the people that the NDAA allows him to detain.

It’s true that Obama has claimed the authority to detain just about anyone he wishes. That’s bad enough. But it’s one thing to claim you have that authority. It’s another thing for the law to give you that authority.

The law that Obama uses to support his claim is the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).

Here is the totality of what the AUMF says. “The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

The AUMF targets those who helped with the 9/11 attacks and those who harbored them. The NDAA targets the same people and then adds an entirely new category: people who have "substantially supported” forces “associated” with al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

Two points. (1) Many legal authorities think those two quoted terms are so vague that a court could let the law apply to you or me. If a future President seized the opportunity, how sure are you that the courts would take your side and not his? (2) Be that as it may, there’s no question that the NDAA places an entirely new category of people in legal jeopardy.

The NDAA says more than the AUMF says. In a perfectly clear way, NDAA expands the government’s detention authority.

President Obama has just accepted Congress's nomination of him as King. And that's why I think the 1776 dream is over.


Reverend Donoghue December 22, 2011 8:22 am (Pacific time)

Well, if we stop hearing from Tim and Bonnie, we'll know what happened to them... Not that those who police us would EVER fabricate a case in order to implicate their enemies...

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