Last week, the Bush administration began to answer questions about the view of justice it is espousing. The answers were duplicitous at best.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft was kind enough to give out a little information about how many people were in detention and on what charges, but the details were foggy.
He gave out few names, and few procedural details regarding making arrests and maintaining detention were delineated. We now know that, of the approximately 1,200 people arrested since Sept. 11, about 800 are still being detained'548 on immigration charges. Ninety-three people have been charged with minor crimes such as forgery or fraud. But why so few names and details?
A hint arose in Anthony Lewis's column in The New York Times Dec. 1. The story of Mazen Al-Najjar goes something like this: A Palestinian comes to the United States in 1984 and stays to teach; he is detained in 1997 for overstaying his visa and held based on secret evidence that he was raising funds for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. After three years, a court rules he must be allowed to defend himself, and, once he was and the government admitted it had no evidence, he was set free. Al-Najjar was arrested again Nov. 24 as part of Ashcroft's post-Sept. 11 dragnet. Now, Al-Najjar is held in solitary confinement. He cannot use the phone and only his lawyer can see him.
A press release on the Justice Department's Web site states that Al-Najjar worked for two Tampa-based front organizations that raised funds for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Nevermind that a judge ruled last year that the government's evidence did not hold up. His deportation has been ordered, but, as the Times' Lewis pointed out, as a Palestinian, Al-Najjar has no state to be deported to. So he sits in a cell 23 hours a day on charges that he has already been acquitted of. Welcome to justice, John Ashcroft style.
One can only hope Al-Najjar's case will be among the questions raised when Ashcroft makes his scheduled appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday.
The Bush-Ashcroft military tribunals and other new forms of justice are defended largely on a pair of smokescreens. First, that this is simply open military justice and second, that the interviews of 5,000 Middle Eastern men are voluntary.
The standard system of military justice in the United States, the court martial system, is a free, fair and open system. Defendants are found guilty by unanimous decisions, are given the right to appeal and all rights of the accused found in civilian courts apply. Cases are closed to the public only in extreme circumstances.
Bush's edict erecting military tribunals is not so virtuous. Guilt can be found by a two-thirds vote, which can, in theory, grant the death penalty. A standard appeals process and due process concerns do not apply and proceedings may be sealed off at a whim. This smokescreen allows people familiar with America's military justice system to feel good about the proceedings. Bush's courts, though, bastardize the American system of justice, civilian and military.
The administration has also stressed that the sweeping investigation of 5,000 Muslim men is voluntary. The sweep includes about 100 men between 18 and 33 in Wisconsin, presumably including some in Madison on student visas.
The Justice Department order calls for \voluntary"" interviews. However, an Immigration and Naturalization Service memo sent to regional offices states that those being interviewed voluntarily can be detained on immigration charges as deemed fit. In terms of justice and due process, the threat of being locked up goes hand in hand with coercion, not volunteering information.
But why stop at 5,000? The executive's new powers cover all non-citizens, regardless of status on the journey to citizenship; nearly 20 million people for those keeping score. If Bush and Ashcroft are so concerned about sleeper terrorist cells, perhaps we should lock them all up. Hey, another prison construction boom could even end the recession. Once every last Muslim man has been interrogated, locked up or thrown in solitary for something of which he was already acquitted, it may be time to move against another ethnic group, like Jews. Think I'm crazy? About 50 Israeli Jews are among those detained. The Justice Department had to cover all of its bases after all, and listen to all innuendo; Arab media have overflowed with stories of how Sept. 11 was carried out by Israel.
That chilling feeling is the Ashcroft-Bush view of Justice in America.
