Tuesday, June 01, 2004

THE CASE AGAINST JOSE PADILLA

The Smoking Gun has the recently de-classified DOJ document that lays out the U.S. government's case against Jose Padilla. If the allegations are accurate (and that is a big if), it would seem that the U.S. has a strong case against Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah Al Muhajir. It would also seem that his capture avoided potentially serious acts of terrorism on American soil.

I still can't help but wonder what the advantage of denying Padilla/Al Muhajir his rights as an American citizen was in this whole process. Would having access to a lawyer and actually charging him with a crime have changed things all that much? Perhaps it would have, but I would still say that we generally need to err on the side of affording constitutionally guaranteed protections to all American citizens, even ones with miserable life stories who plot terror and mayhem against us.

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