In March 2005, the ACLU, leading human rights organizations and retired high-ranking military officers filed a series of unprecedented lawsuits against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and three other high-ranking government officials, charging them with direct responsibility for the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody, in violation of the Constitution and international laws. The plaintiffs are nine individuals who were brutally tortured while in military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. One was stabbed and sliced on his forearm, beaten unconscious during interrogation, locked naked in a coffin-like box for days, and urinated on. Another was sexually assaulted, shackled to a fence for hours in 120-degree heat and subjected to mock executions.
Prisoners Never Charged
Several plaintiffs also were forced to witness deliberate desecration of the Koran, as when soldiers ordered a military dog to pick up the Koran in its mouth. None of the plaintiffs was ever charged, and all eventually were released. On Dec. 6, 2005, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against former CIA Director George Tenet, 10 CIA staff members and three private airline companies on behalf of Khaled El-Masri, an innocent German citizen. He was a victim of the U.S. policy of “extraordinary rendition,” under which the U.S. government abducts and transfers individuals to foreign countries that are known t use torture. El-Masri, a father of five young children, was forcibly abducted while on vacation in Macedonia. He was beaten, drugged, tortured and held incommunicado in Afghanistan and elsewhere for five months. Although CIA officers realized three months into El-Masri’s nightmare that they had abducted an innocent man, and Tenet was so notified, El-Masri still was not released.
Held in Isolation
During his captivity, he was never charged with a crime or allowed any contact with a lawyer or his family. On May 12, after lawyers for the CIA argued that the case could not proceed because “state secrets” might be exposed, the judge dismissed the case. The use of the “state secrets” defense, to prevent courts from holding lawless government officials responsible, will be tested on appeal. In the wake of 9/11, countless innocent Arabs, Muslims and South Asians have been pulled off planes, searched at airports and even stopped on the street, based purely on their ethnicity or religious affiliation. The ACLU has contested these practices in several lawsuits. In one, the ACLU and the Council on American-Islamic Relations challenged the Dept. of Homeland Security’s detention of several Muslim American families, including an infant and a pregnant woman, when the arrived at the Canada/United States border after participating in a “Reviving the Islamic Spirit”
A Sad Ending
Detained, interrogated fingerprinted and photographed, they were prevented from contacting their families or the media. Tragically, last December a federal judge dismissed the case. An appeal is planned. Americans across the political spectrum are increasingly outraged about the unchecked abuses of the Bush Administration and its pattern of contempt for the rule of law. This 4th of July, as the Founders did in 1776, today’s patriots are organizing across the country to oppose, in the words of the Declaration, these “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” The ACLU hardly is alone in this struggle. It is joined by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, religious leaders, including Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, and all of the courageous groups mentioned above.
Postscript
From calls for impeachment to grassroots lobbying, from electoral politics to prayerful vigils, from noisy protests in the streets to online blogs and petitions, the people — as the People have done in every great movement for social justice — are taking seriously the call of the Declaration “to dissolve the political bands which have connected them” to their current government. In that spirit, Happy 4th of July.
