Judge Tosses Out Ahmed Abu Ali's Case
By Elaine Cassel
Fifteen months ago, American citizen and Virginia resident Ahmed Abu Ali was arrested while taking an examination in a Saudi University and imprisoned without charge and without access to an attorney. For the better part of a year, the Saudi government said it was holding Abu Ali for the benefit of the United States, who had requested his detention.
Federal prosecutors and FBI agents visited Abu Ali in his cell in Saudi Arabia. But they never charged him with a crime (though they appeared to want to link him to the Alexandria 11, young men serving 85 to 115 years for being in favor of helping the Muslim cause in Kashmir). When the Alexandria 11 case ended, Abu Ali's parents sued in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, asking the court to order a hearing on his detention. For authority, they relied on the Supreme Court rulings in the cases of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners and American citizen Yaser Hamdi.
At the time they filed the suit, in August of this year, the Saudi government told the family they had no interest in their son. The United States insisted that it was not holding him. But the day the family filed suit, the State Department, never before willing to share much information about their son, called the parents and told them that the Saudis were charging him with unspecified terrorism-related crimes.
That seemed to be enough for U.S. District Judge John Bates. It seems to me, he said, that the U.S. has nothing to do with his detention. After all, that is what the government told me, he said.
So Abu Ali remains a prisoner and the U.S. government disclaims liability or responsibility. The U.S. can, and will, continue to mastermind the imprisonment of its citizens without accountability. The administration cleverly dodges the law of the land and the law of human rights so deftly by calling on its friends, like the Saudis, to do its dirty work for them. My guess is that Abu Ali was tortured or at least abused while in prison, in order to extract information from him. When none was forthcoming, they had no reason to charge him or extradite him to the U.S. But they cannot let him come home either, lest he disclose how he was treated by his government and its surrogate, Saudi Arabia.
In another case, a federal judge is unmoved by the plight of another U.S. citizen. Remember Jose Padilla, the American citizen who has been held without charge for two years? In June, the Supreme Court dismissed his habeas corpus petition, claiming it was filed in the wrong court. Upon refiling, the U.S. District Court in South Carolina (he sits in a Navy brig in Charleston) said there was no reason to expedite the case on the docket.
After all, it is just the case of another American imprisoned contrary to the law and the Constitution. When American courts turn away the pleas of its own whose rights are so obviously and egregiously violated, we are in a pretty hopeless state, indeed.
By Elaine Cassel
Fifteen months ago, American citizen and Virginia resident Ahmed Abu Ali was arrested while taking an examination in a Saudi University and imprisoned without charge and without access to an attorney. For the better part of a year, the Saudi government said it was holding Abu Ali for the benefit of the United States, who had requested his detention.
Federal prosecutors and FBI agents visited Abu Ali in his cell in Saudi Arabia. But they never charged him with a crime (though they appeared to want to link him to the Alexandria 11, young men serving 85 to 115 years for being in favor of helping the Muslim cause in Kashmir). When the Alexandria 11 case ended, Abu Ali's parents sued in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, asking the court to order a hearing on his detention. For authority, they relied on the Supreme Court rulings in the cases of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners and American citizen Yaser Hamdi.
At the time they filed the suit, in August of this year, the Saudi government told the family they had no interest in their son. The United States insisted that it was not holding him. But the day the family filed suit, the State Department, never before willing to share much information about their son, called the parents and told them that the Saudis were charging him with unspecified terrorism-related crimes.
That seemed to be enough for U.S. District Judge John Bates. It seems to me, he said, that the U.S. has nothing to do with his detention. After all, that is what the government told me, he said.
So Abu Ali remains a prisoner and the U.S. government disclaims liability or responsibility. The U.S. can, and will, continue to mastermind the imprisonment of its citizens without accountability. The administration cleverly dodges the law of the land and the law of human rights so deftly by calling on its friends, like the Saudis, to do its dirty work for them. My guess is that Abu Ali was tortured or at least abused while in prison, in order to extract information from him. When none was forthcoming, they had no reason to charge him or extradite him to the U.S. But they cannot let him come home either, lest he disclose how he was treated by his government and its surrogate, Saudi Arabia.
In another case, a federal judge is unmoved by the plight of another U.S. citizen. Remember Jose Padilla, the American citizen who has been held without charge for two years? In June, the Supreme Court dismissed his habeas corpus petition, claiming it was filed in the wrong court. Upon refiling, the U.S. District Court in South Carolina (he sits in a Navy brig in Charleston) said there was no reason to expedite the case on the docket.
After all, it is just the case of another American imprisoned contrary to the law and the Constitution. When American courts turn away the pleas of its own whose rights are so obviously and egregiously violated, we are in a pretty hopeless state, indeed.
posted by BLONDIE at 10:22 AM
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