Editorial: Secret Detentions

September 5, 2002

Source: The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=cole

On September 5, 2002 The Nation printed an editorial by David Cole stating that "as is often the case in times of crisis, noncitizens have been hardest hit. In its investigation of September 11, the Administration has detained between 1,500 and 2,000 people, mostly foreigners, under unprecedented secrecy. Attorney General John Ashcroft has justified the use of transparently pretextual charges to hold them by calling them 'suspected terrorists,' but his grounds for suspicion are apparently so unfounded that not a single one has been charged with involvement in the September 11 attacks, and with the exception of four people indicted on support-for-terrorism charges in late August, no one has been charged with any terrorist act. Those arrested on immigration charges--the vast majority--have been effectively 'disappeared.' Their cases are not listed on any public docket, their hearings are closed to the public and the presiding judges are instructed to neither confirm nor deny that their cases exist, if asked. Two district courts and a unanimous court of appeals have held this practice unconstitutional; as Judge Damon Keith wrote for the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 'Democracies die behind closed doors.'"