Monday, May 21, 2007

The Threat Of Being Disappeared

For anyone interested in the trial of Jose Padilla, I highly recommend keeping tabs on Warren Richey's reporting for the Christian Science Monitor. Everything I've read of his so far has gone beyond just the play-by-play of the legal procedure (although that's there too), to include some of the tensions the trial presents in terms of judicial handling of terrorism cases.

Today, he describes how the limitations placed on the permissible lines of questioning of a prosecution witness, one of the "Lackawanna Six" named Yahya Goba, has led to testimony more likely to further Padilla's defense than damage it. What I found more significant, though, was this background on Goba's testimony:

He is appearing at the trial under a plea agreement and is seeking to have the government reduce his 10-year prison sentence. Goba, who is married with a 4-year-old daughter, has a strong additional incentive to cooperate in every way with the government. He wants to avoid being designated an enemy combatant and diverted out of the criminal justice system into indefinite military detention. 

Now, to clarify, everything I've been able to find on Goba's plea deal suggests that he and his co-defendants indeed pleaded guilty in return for the government taking the threat of being declared an enemy combatant off the table. As part of his plea deal, he agreed to cooperate with subsequent government investigations of terrorist cases, which explains his presence at the Padillo trial. But I'm not sure if he can still be "diverted out of the criminal justice system", as Richey claims.

Still, the way in which enemy combatant status and the subsequent military tribunals have tainted even the limited number of criminal prosecutions of accused terrorists is clear. It establishes a dual track "justice" system that the government can arbitrarily manipulate, depending on the strength of its case and its public relations needs.

Another reason why American principles of justice demand that enemy combatant status be severely limited, clearly defined, and subject to the same legal guarantees the American legal system affords to criminal defendants.

Posted by Judah in:  Global War On Terror   Human Rights   

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