United States
Senate passes provision allowing military to detain terrorism suspects in U.S.Posted Dec 8 2011
The U.S. Senate passed a provision Tuesday that allows the military to detain terrorism suspects on U.S. soil and hold them indefinitely without trial, according to The Huffington Post
The proposal is part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 and is written to include American citizens. A proposed amendment could have stymied the provision, but it failed 61 to 37. Under the new law, the military could arrest someone on charges of terrorism without formally being charged.
The White House is threatening a veto and states that the provision would cause confusion and interfere with counterterrorism efforts.
Forbes said the event was “the greatest threat to civil liberties Americans face.”
Wired writer Spencer Ackerman says, “Despite the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a right to trial, the Senate bill would let the government lock up any citizen it swears is a terrorist, without the burden of proving its case to an independent judge, and for the lifespan of an amorphous war that conceivably will never end.”
The New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal calls the law an “a way to make indefinite detention a permanent part of the American way.”