Pentagon Allows Lawyer for U.S.-Born Taliban Suspect Reuters

The Pentagon said on Tuesday it will allow an American-born man captured in Afghanistan two years ago and held at a U.S. Navy jail as ”an enemy combatant” to have access to a lawyer.

Yaser Esam Hamdi, 22, who is held in Charleston, South Carolina , and has not been charged, will be given access to a lawyer “as a matter of discretion and military policy” because interrogators have finished collecting intelligence in questioning him, the Defense Department said.

Notice that after violating this American’s constitutional rights for two full years, the Pentagon still says they don’t have to ‘give’ any of these rights to one of our citizens. This is exactly why the Constitution exists — to prevent abuses of authority. mjh

See also If you read this, does that make you an Enemy Combatant?

[From Judge Diana Gribbon Motz’s dissent:] As the Framers well understood, the Executive branch must be subjected to checks on its power if individual liberties are to be preserved….

The Executive’s treatment of Hamdi threatens the freedoms we all cherish….