Kafkaesque
Jun 27th, 2005 at 8:24 am by Susie
We used to be America:
WASHINGTON, June 26 - Two leading civil rights groups charge in a new study that the Bush administration has twisted the American system of due process “beyond recognition” in jailing at least 70 terror suspects as “material witnesses” since the Sept. 11 attacks, and the groups are calling on Congress to impose tougher safeguards.
The report, which is to be released on Monday by the groups, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, found that the 70 suspects, about a quarter of them American citizens and all but one Muslim men, were jailed - often for weeks or months - in American facilities without being charged with a crime. Ultimately, only seven men were formally accused of supporting terrorism, the report said.
The report, paid for in part by the Open Society Institute, founded by the financier George Soros, charges that many of the men held as material witnesses were “thrust into a Kafkaesque world of indefinite detention without charges, secret evidence and baseless accusations.”
