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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Sat, 05 Sep 2009 05:24:25 GMT
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John D. Ashcroft (L) and George W. Bush |
A US court has paved the way for the indictment of former President George W. Bush's Attorney General, John Ashcroft, over his 'wrongful' judgments.
The three-member legal panel of the 9th federal Circuit Court of Appeals issued a statement on Friday, which holds the former Attorney General liable for the illegal detention of suspects captured in the wake of the September 11 incident in which a number of US government and financial centers came under attack.
The US court denounced the exploitation during Ashcroft's tenure of so-called material witnesses, terror suspects kept in custody without immediate charges, as "repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history."
"Sadly, however, even now, more than 217 years after the ratification of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, some confidently assert that the government has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end ... not because there is evidence that they have committed a crime, but merely because the government wishes to investigate them for possible wrongdoing, or to prevent them from having contact with others in the outside world," the statement added.
The court recounted a number of the 'material witnesses' whose civil rights were trampled under the judicial oversight of the former top legal authority.
The findings of the US appeals tribunal draws upon the court case of a US citizen in which Abdullah al-Kidd sued Ashcroft for illegal policies promoting the detention of Muslims and Arabs in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Al-Kidd was detained for two weeks on suspicion of acts of terrorism. He was later released after clearing the accusations.
Al-Kidd's aborted lawsuit entailed negative ramifications for the former legal authority who also advocated the indefinite detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration doctrines.
The court ruled out Ashcroft's absolute use of indemnity granted to the top US judge by the Department of Justice for his prosecutorial role in trying "to prevent terrorist attacks by taking suspected terrorists off the street."
All three judges, selected by former Republican presidents, decided that the former Attorney General had violated the US civil rights acts stipulated in the constitution by applying authoritarian procedures that gave him immunity from prosecution.
ARQN/TG/DT
