Letter to the House about Detainee Provisions in 'National Defense Authorization Act'

Dec 9, 2011

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December 8, 2011

Representative Robert Andrews
U.S. House of Representatives

Dear Representative Andrews:

You will soon be considering H.R. 1540, the National Defense Authorization Act in conference committee. We write with particular concern about the detainee provisions in the bill.

We urge you to delete the provisions of Section 1031, 1032, and 1033 authorizing U.S. military personnel to arrest persons suspected of supporting terrorism – including U.S. citizens on U.S. soil – and to detain them indefinitely under the Military Commissions Act. Section 1032, in fact, requires military arrests and custody for individuals suspected of direct involvement with al-Qaeda or associated groups.

You are probably aware that the definitions of terrorism and support of terrorism in the underlying Authorization for the Use of Military Force are vague and somewhat overreaching. Parts of this bill would attach very serious consequences to these vague definitions – up to and including life-long detention without trial.

We understand that crimes relating to terrorism can be very serious. But our criminal justice system handles serious crime every day, within the protections of our constitution. We see a particular danger in calling on our military forces to bypass core constitutional rights, based on a suspicion of terrorist involvement, and to allow that suspicion to remain unchecked during a life-time of detention without trial.

Our grade school text-books in the 1950s warned against the dangers of non-democratic governments that would arrest citizens and take them away, based on something the individual had said or written, or based on the accusation of another person held by the government. The terrorist acts of 2001 took a lot from us as a nation –many lives, our economic security, and to a great extent, our sense of security at home. Surely we do not intend now to let that legacy of terrorism take away our most fundamental freedoms. We urge you to re-think these provisions in the NDAA and to remove them from the final bill.

Sincerely,

Ruth Flower
Legislative Director