Judge rules US gov’t must give ACLU access to man detained for months without lawyer

Since September, the US military has detained an unidentified US citizen suspected of joining ISIL/Daesh somewhere in Iraq without allowing him to speak to a lawyer, even though he’s never been charged with a crime. It’s about as serious and blatant a violation of someone’s Constitutional rights as it gets. The ACLU’s been on the case since the beginning, and they’ve just secured a federal court ruling in their favor:

"Somewhere in Iraq, a United States citizen has been in the custody of the U.S. armed forces for over three months."

That is how a federal Judge on Saturday begins her ruling, describing the situation of a never-charged American classified as an enemy combatant, as she ordered the Pentagon provide the prisoner with "immediate" access to a lawyer.

The still-unnamed man was captured by the Syrian militia in mid-September and handed over to the U.S. military as a suspected member of the Islamic State.

A couple weeks later, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a habeas corpus petition and seeking to represent the man, who, by the government's own account, requested an attorney after being read his Miranda rights.

The Defense Department argued that the circumstances did not warrant the ACLU's having immediate access to the detainee.

The judge wasn’t convinced. And she doesn’t mince words about it.

In her at-times-blistering ruling, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia denied the Pentagon's motion to dismiss the ACLU's petition and ordered that it give the group "immediate and unmonitored access to the detainee."

[…]

Chutkan described the Defense Department's position in denying the ACLU access to the detainee "to be disingenuous at best."

She went on, "the Department's position that his request should simply be ignored until it decides what to do with the detainee and when to allow him access to counsel is both remarkable and troubling."

Officials were even considering getting the man to renounce his American citizenship so they could keep in him Saudi Arabia, presumably so he could be subjected to even worse treatment. This is an incredibly important ruling; imagine the ramifications if the judge had gone the other way. There’s zero doubt in any competent mind that the Trump administration’s position here is flatly unconstitutional, but all it takes is one court ruling that an egregious abuse of power is permissible in some circumstances to start the country down the same road that’s led to the PATRIOT Act, extraordinary rendition, illegal mass surveillance, and a litany of other travesties.

(via ACLU | Facebook)