That Obama has reacted so quickly and decisively in reversing Bush's unlawful security apparatus has taken me aback. I had thought he would tread a bit more cautiously.
Last week in my Amnesty International Southwark group we wrote letters to Obama urging him to look into the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. Ali al-Marri is a Qatari national and legal US immigrant, who had the unfortunate luck to enter America on September 10th 2001. He was arrested in Illinois in December 2001, and was to face trial on fraud charges and making false statements to the FBI. But he was named an ‘enemy combatant’ by Bush, transferred to a military base in South Carolina, where he has been held without charge or trial ever since. He was only allowed access to a lawyer in 2004, the first contact with his family on 29th April 2008.
Obama's executive order makes direct reference to Ali al-Marri, ordering the attorney general to look into the case and that is to be applauded (Obama must've received our letters). Ali al-Marri may indeed be a terrorist, or he may not be. To hold him, however, a legal US resident, without charge for so long, unable to prove his guilt or innocence goes against the grain of everything that America is supposed to stand for.
Maybe, just maybe, justice and a bit of common sense is returning. When historians look back at the Bush presidency, I imagine they will liken it to the McCarthy era where the civil liberties were trampled for political expediency and innocents paid the price for largely ineffectual witch hunts.
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That's fantastic news. When the news broke about Obama's plans to close Guantanamo, I turned to Catherine and said, rather cheesily: "Damn, he's good isn't he?" I do worry, though, that so much of Bush's reign will be swept under the carpet now, when there are some massive issues that people need to address, right now - Americans need to face the fact that they kept voting that man into power. As far as I can tell, no one has given the rest of the world a proper explanation for that yet. I'm not sure they should be allowed to forget just yet!
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