Habeas Corpus and MCA Action Delayed Until We All Speak Up

If the Military Commissions Act has lit a fire under you, the upcoming congressional recess (August 4 through September 3) is a good time to spread that sense of urgency to our elected representatives when they're in their home districts. We have one critical month to meet with our senators and representatives or their aides in their district offices or in town hall meetings, to write letters to the editor and opinion editorials, and to engage in other grassroots methods for raising public awareness about the Military Commissions Act. Find bill information and links here.

Here are a few updates on Habeas Corpus and the Military Commissions Act since our last action alert:

Status of Habeas Corpus amendment. Last Monday, we informed you that Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) had offered a Habeas Corpus amendment (SA 2022) to the Defense Appropriations Bill (HR 1585). The amendment did not come up for a vote, and the bill to which the two senators tried to attach their amendment now appears unlikely to come up again until after Congress's August recess. The amendment was a version of S. 185, which had already passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with Specter as the only Republican voting aye.

Executive Order on the President's Interpretation of Common Article 3. On Friday, July 20, President Bush complied with the Military Commissions Act by issuing an Executive Order: Interpretation of the Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 as Applied to a Program of Detention and Interrogation Operated by the Central Intelligence Agency. Neither the order nor the statements of administration members have revealed which interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, are still permitted under the order. Read David Cole's article in Salon, Bush's Torture Ban is Full of Loopholes.

Court Allows Evidence in Detainee Cases. On Friday, July 20, the DC Court of Appeals issued an order that opens up the secretive review process for Guantánamo detainees, in the case of Bismullah v. Gates. The order affects the DC Appeals Court's methods of reviewing the enemy combatant judgments made by the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT). The government argued that the DC Appeals Court should limit its examination to the official record submitted from the CSRT. Bismullah and other detainees stated that the CSRTs themselves, and the official records resulting from them, exclude exculpatory evidence (information that could prove their innocence). The DC judges said that they could not properly judge appeals if they do not have access to all of the evidence, "any more than one can tell whether a fraction is more or less than one-half by looking only at the numerator and not at the denominator." Highly sensitive classified evidence would still not be available to the general public or to the detainee. Read the order here. Find the Center for Constitutional Rights' summary of the order here.

Habeas Hearing of House Armed Services Committee this Thursday, July 26, at 9 a.m. The committee will receive testimony on Upholding the Principle of Habeas Corpus for Detainees from several witnesses, including Stephen E. Abraham, Lieutenant Colonel of the U.S. Army Reserves, whose declaration that evidence used in Combatant Status Review Tribunals does not include evidence that could prove the innocence of detainees, may have influenced the Supreme Court's announcement that it will review the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. This gives the Supreme Court an opportunity to overturn the DC decision, which denies U.S. federal courts the right to hear Guantánamo detainees' challenges of their detentions. Read New York Times article about Abraham here. For a list of other witnesses, click here and scroll down to Thursday's schedule.

The Writ of Habeas Corpus was an important leap forward for humankind when it became the law of the land 800 years ago, but today it faces the peril of obliteration. It is up to us--the grassroots--to make sure our elected representatives know that we expect them to fully restore the Bill of Rights for us all. So, please continue to make those phone calls and congressional visits, send faxes, write letters to the editor, have editorial board meetings, write opinion editorials and get them published, create media in your community, and raise public awareness in any way that you can about the importance of re-establishing values of fairness, equality, human rights, and the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Get contact information for senators and representatives' district offices by going to their website or calling your local library.

Thank you for all you do!

Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Nancy Talanian, Director
Hope Marston, West Region Organizer
Ben Grosscup, East Region Organizer
Susan Heitker, Administrator
Lauren Tomkiewicz, Haywood Burns Fellow
Sam Litton, Intern