[Vision2020] Justices To Hear Appeal Over Detention Suit

[Tom Hansen]

>From the New York Times
New York, New York
Monday, October 18, 2010

Justices To Hear Appeal Over Detention Suit

WASHINGTON — Abdullah al-Kidd, born in Kansas and once a star running back
at the University of Idaho, spent 16 days in federal detention in three
states in 2003, sometimes naked and sometimes shackled hand and foot, but
was never charged with a crime.

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether he may sue John
Ashcroft, the former attorney general, for what Mr. Kidd contends was an
unconstitutional use of a law meant to hold “material witnesses.” Mr. Kidd
says the law was used as a pretext for detaining him because he was
suspected of terrorist activities.

The material witness law is typically used to hold people who have
information about crimes committed by others when there is reason to think
they would otherwise not appear at trial to give testimony. Critics say
the Bush administration radically reinterpreted the law after the terror
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, using it as a preventive-detention tool.

Laws allowing the preventive detention of suspected terrorists are common
in Europe. The United States does not have such a law, but Mr. Kidd
contends that a policy set by Mr. Ashcroft allowed federal prosecutors to
use the material witness law to the same end.

Mr. Kidd, who described himself in a 2004 interview as “anti-bin Laden,
anti-Taliban, anti-suicide bombing, anti-terrorism,” was never called to
testify as a witness.

The Obama administration had urged the justices to reverse a decision of
the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San
Francisco, that had allowed Mr. Kidd’s lawsuit to proceed. “If permitted
to stand,” Acting Solicitor General Neal K. Katyal wrote, “the decision
below would seriously limit the circumstances in which prosecutors could
invoke the material witness statute without fear of personal liability.”

Mr. Kidd, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, said the
appeals court’s ruling was straightforward and correct. Mr. Ashcroft’s
“deliberate decision to authorize the pretextual arrest of witnesses was
clearly unconstitutional,” Mr. Kidd’s lawyers told the justices.

Mr. Kidd, who was known as Lavoni T. Kidd in 1995 when he led the
University of Idaho football team, the Vandals, in rushing, was on his way
to Saudi Arabia to work on a doctorate in Islamic studies in March 2003
when he was arrested and handcuffed at Dulles International Airport
outside Washington.

Magistrate Judge Mikel H. Williams of the Federal District Court in Boise,
Idaho, authorized the arrest, based on an affidavit from Special Agent
Scott Mace of the F.B.I. “Kidd is scheduled to take a one-way, first-class
flight (costing approximately $5,000),” the affidavit said.

That statement was false: the ticket was for a round trip, in coach,
costing $1,700.

In the 2004 interview, Mr. Kidd said he did not understand why someone
held as a mere witness should be subjected to harsh treatment.

“I was made to sit in a small cell for hours and hours and hours, buck
naked,” he said. “I was treated worse than murderers.”

Justice Elena Kagan disqualified herself from the case, Ashcroft v. Al
Kidd, No. 10-98, because she had worked on it when she was United States
solicitor general.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown