Where the torture never stops..

[Greg Broiles]

At 01:04 PM 10/25/2001 -0700, Onin wal-a bin Hakkin wrote:

>if you are incarcerated for a fucked up deed you shouldnt
>expect to be put in the hilton. is this not a universal
>idea and accepted?
>jailprisontheklink is supposed to SUCK.
>[...]
>i ask you, am i a bad person for feeling this way?

What you seem to be missing is that the approx 1000 people now being held 
haven't been "incarcerated for a fucked up deed" - they're being held for 
what's probably a spectrum of reasons, ranging from "found in an airport 
with a one-way plane ticket, a boxcutter, and a forged passport on the 
morning of 9/11" to "gave a cop too much attitude while having a 
non-Western name". But we don't know who's being held, nor for how long, 
nor what the reasons are, or the evidence which establishes that the 
"reasons" have some relationship to reality.

We have a special process for deciding who's done fucked up deeds and thus 
deserving of punishment, and it's called a trial.

After these people have had one, then we can argue about what ought to 
happen to them. Until then - and/or at least until the evidence against 
these people has been made public and subjected to scrutiny - we don't know 
whether these people are Mother Teresa or Satan himself or somewhere in 
between.

If we're going to start beating and torturing and killing people pretrial 
(paying special attention to foreigners who may not fully agree with our 
culture or values), exactly how is the ruling regime in the US different 
from the ruling regime in Afghanistan? The only aspect left that I can see 
that's different would be a nominally secular vs religious basis, but I 
don't trust Ashcroft to respect that for long.

Pretrial detention is not supposed to suck, it's supposed to be minimally 
burdensome, to the extent that's compatible with making sure people show up 
for trial, don't commit further crimes, and don't cost an exorbitant amount 
of staff attention.

(* This isn't meant as a claim that what we had prior to 9/11 in terms of 
trials, pretrial detention, or any of the other criminal procedure features 
was what it's advertised to be, or that it was compatible with the 
Constitution - but I still regard the abandonment of even the pretense of 
complying with the Constitution as a significant step towards some very 
serious trouble.)


--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles at well.com
"We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids