Opening the door - albeit slowly - for war crimes trials for Bush/Cheney criminals
FINDLAW.COM
By Casey C. Sullivan, Esq.
06/18/2015
Muslim and Arab men who were wrongfully detained can sue former attorney general John Ashcroft and other Bush-era officials for violating their constitutional rights, the Second Circuit ruled yesterday.
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Bush long overdue for his court date at The Hague
War Crimes Tribunal
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In a lengthy ruling, Second Circuit said that under the alleged facts, based
largely on a government investigation, the Department of Justice and FBI put in place policies which violated the detainees civil rights and took no steps to stem the abuse when they knew detainees were not terrorism suspects.
The development means that the Bivens suit, which has dragged on for over 13 years and which targets officials in their individual capacity, can go forward.
Harsh Conditions for Detainees
Following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11th, 2001, the FBI, INS, and DOJ initiated a sweeping investigation. According to a lawsuit, that investigation resulted in a
"hold-until-cleared" policy where any non-citizen Muslim or Arab man who had violated his visa and was "encountered during the investigation of a tip," would be arrested and detained, regardless of whether he was a legitimate suspect or not.
The eight men who filed the class action were detained for three to eight months but were never considered serious suspects.
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There is no statute of limitations on war crimes |
According to 9/11 detainees, they were often subject to abuse from guards, including being kept from sleeping and regularly strip searched.
National Security Doesn't Protect Against Suit
The Court explicitly rejected the government's national security defences.
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All Bush administration accomplices will be subject
to prosecution, including Rove and then CIA scumbag
Kofer Black
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While national security concerns may have motivated the government's actions, they do not prevent the 9/11 detainees from suing over those actions.
As the Second Circuit wrote, "the suffering endured by those who were imprisoned merely because they were caught up in the hysteria of the days following 9/11 is
not without a remedy." If the facts are as alleged, the 9/11 detainees' conditions were "punitive and unconstitutional" and a result of the decisions of high level government officials.
The court notes, however, that discovery could prove otherwise.
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