Friday, October 20, 2006

Dear Maher: As I was saying ...


It was only yesterday that I gave Maher Arar some free advice. Now I strongly recommend that he take it:

Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

In a notice dated Wednesday, the Justice Department listed 196 pending habeas cases, some of which cover groups of detainees. The new Military Commissions Act (MCA), it said, provides that "no court, justice, or judge" can consider those petitions or other actions related to treatment or imprisonment filed by anyone designated as an enemy combatant, now or in the future.

So that skiing vacation in Vail, Maher? Um ... I don't think so.

1 comment:

nathan said...

I'm thinking Maher shouldn't even get within 100kms of the border (which is about the distance that FBI agents are allowed to pursue suspects into this country without permission.) Churchill, Manitoba sounds nice this time of year.

But we have our own no-evidence trials going on:

http://tinyurl.com/ykgdvf