The continuing detention of Jose Padilla without criminal charges is an indefensible affront to civil liberties and an unreasonable bow to the pressures of terror. In a Sept. 9 decision, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Padilla’s incarceration, threatening the freedoms promised to us in the Constitution.
Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was arrested in Chicago in 2002 on allegations of having trained in al-Qaeda camps and plotting to blow up apartment buildings in the United States. He has since been held for over three years in a naval brig after being labeled an “enemy combatant” by the President, despite no criminal charges have ever been brought against him and in clear violation of his constitutional right to due process.
In detaining Padilla indefinitely without charge, President Bush has illegally suspended the writ of habeas corpus, a power specifically granted to Congress by the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent, meant to be exercised only in cases of rebellion and invasion. The current situation is neither.
The court contends that Congress consented to the suspension of habeas corpus after 9/11, in a resolution granting the president all powers necessary to combat terrorism. By claiming as necessary the power to detain U.S. citizens arrested on U.S. soil indefinitely, the court has spat in the face of logic and is essentially opening a loophole in the right to due process.
Furthermore, the ruling has effectively declared the entire country a combat zone in a “war” that even the administration has conceded may continue indefinitely. Thus, the declaration single-handedly slashes the writ of habeas corpus out of the Constitution for the foreseeable future.
Padilla’s detention is not a new point of contention. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis warned Georgetown Law Center grads about the dangers of Padilla’s detention during his 2003 commencement address. He cautioned them not to assume that the repression of rights will extend only to individuals on the fringes like Padilla. Instead, it is the greatest test to freedom today.
This court ruling is an extreme concession in a nation once determined not to allow terrorism to affect its way of life. The nation seems poised to give up essential liberty for temporary safety, as Ben Franklin once warned against. When Padilla’s case reaches the Supreme Court, as most legal experts believe it will, we must hope that the nine in black will renew the civil liberties that have served this country well for over 200 years.
