aGameOfThrones
02-20-2011, 11:55 PM
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on March 2 in Mr. Kidd’s lawsuit against John Ashcroft, who was President George W. Bush’s first attorney general. It is this term’s only major national security case, and it will give the court an opportunity to weigh in on an issue that has divided Western democracies: when may the government detain citizens it is unable to charge with a crime for fear they may engage in terrorism?
Mr. Kidd’s suit contends that policies put in place by Mr. Ashcroft twisted the federal material witness law — which allows the government to arrest people with knowledge of others’ crimes to make sure they are available to testify — into a preventive detention measure of the sort used abroad to hold and investigate citizens who are themselves suspected of terrorism.
In his testimony to a House subcommittee on March 27, 2003, Mr. Mueller said that Mr. Kidd was “a U.S. native and former University of Idaho football player.” Mr. Mueller added that Mr. Kidd “was arrested by the F.B.I. at Dulles International Airport en route to Saudi Arabia.” But he failed to say that Mr. Kidd was not arrested on criminal charges but as a material witness.
By the time Mr. Mueller testified, Mr. Kidd had been in custody for 11 days in three states under harsh conditions.
“They were scrambling to make a case against me,” Mr. Kidd said last week in an interview at his father’s home here.
In the end, Mr. Kidd was neither charged with a crime nor asked to testify against anyone else. He was released a few days after Mr. Mueller’s remarks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/us/politics/21witness.html?_r=1&hp
Mr. Kidd’s suit contends that policies put in place by Mr. Ashcroft twisted the federal material witness law — which allows the government to arrest people with knowledge of others’ crimes to make sure they are available to testify — into a preventive detention measure of the sort used abroad to hold and investigate citizens who are themselves suspected of terrorism.
In his testimony to a House subcommittee on March 27, 2003, Mr. Mueller said that Mr. Kidd was “a U.S. native and former University of Idaho football player.” Mr. Mueller added that Mr. Kidd “was arrested by the F.B.I. at Dulles International Airport en route to Saudi Arabia.” But he failed to say that Mr. Kidd was not arrested on criminal charges but as a material witness.
By the time Mr. Mueller testified, Mr. Kidd had been in custody for 11 days in three states under harsh conditions.
“They were scrambling to make a case against me,” Mr. Kidd said last week in an interview at his father’s home here.
In the end, Mr. Kidd was neither charged with a crime nor asked to testify against anyone else. He was released a few days after Mr. Mueller’s remarks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/us/politics/21witness.html?_r=1&hp