New York Times Editorial - Rules for the real world

New York Times Editorial - Rules for the real world
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 20, 2006



The White House has been acting lately as though the struggle over the proper way to handle prisoners is a debate about how tough to get with Osama bin Laden if he's ever actually caught. This week, we've had two powerful reminders of the real issue: When a government puts itself above the law, innocent people are put at risk.

On Monday, a Canadian government commission issued a scathing report about the story of a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, who was abducted by U.S. agents in late 2002 and turned over to the Syrian authorities, who obligingly tortured him for 10 months until he signed a transparently false confession.

The report said Arar never had any connection to terrorism. But the United States stonewalled Canada's investigation, which concluded that the Americans misled Canada about their plans for Arar. Sending him to Syria, where he would certainly be tortured, was not just immoral and un-American, it was a violation of international law.

In Iraq, U.S. authorities have been holding an Iraqi-born photographer for The Associated Press for five months without charging him with any crime. Military officials say they have evidence that Bilal Hussein has "strong ties" to insurgents, but refuse to show it to Hussein, his lawyers, The Associated Press or even to the Iraqi courts.

We don't know the truth. But we know how to get at it: If the American authorities have evidence against Hussein, they should present it. If he committed a crime, he should be charged. If not, he should be set free.

These two cases illustrate vividly why Congress needs to pass an effective law on the handling of prisoners that not only provides for legal military tribunals to try dangerous men like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is believed to have organized the Sept. 11 attacks, but also deals with the other men, perhaps hundreds, wrongly imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, and sets rules for the future.

The bills now before Congress don't meet the test. The White House's measure endorses the practice of picking up any foreign citizens the United States wants, abusing and even torturing them, and then trying them on the basis of secret evidence. It effectively repudiates the Geneva Conventions, putting U.S. soldiers at risk.

The other bill, written by the only three Republican senators who were willing to defy the White House, preserves the conventions and creates a respectable trial process. But it defines "illegal enemy combatant" so broadly that the administration could apply it to almost any foreigner it chose, including legal U.S. residents. Both bills choke off judicial review and allow even those acquitted by a military tribunal to be held indefinitely.

Either bill might be acceptable if the U.S. government were infallible. As it is, they would legalize the sorts of abuses of power that the United States fought against in other countries for most of the 20th century.