Disappeared

By Roy D. Follendore III

August 15, 2002

All you have to do is click on www.remember-chile.org.uk/testimonies/gabriela.htm to find out what it means to have a rule of law that does not respect the basic rights of citizens to have civil redress when they are detained by the Government. On November 17th 1974, a 24 year old law student at the the University of Chile became a member of the detained-disappeared. She and her husband were arrested by the secret police. This was just one of thousands of people who were detained as suspects under military laws and who were never seen again. Holding Americans without a civil trial is as wrong as the abduction of the citizens of Chile by the military regime of General Pinochet.

Yet today it is Americans who are being detained-disappeared by our military. They are being held as military prisoners of war and not being given due process under law. They are holding American citizens outside United States borders so that they do not have civil rights. What they are doing is fundamentally and morally wrong. American citizens do not have access to the courts to challenge their designation as enemy combatants. One does not need a law degree to understand that the violation of a single individuals civil rights is a violation of the rights of everyone. If our government has sufficient evidence of criminal conduct of a United States citizen then it should charge them in U.S. courts.

If we Americans abandon the concept of a fair trial by a jury of our peers, then we may just as well eliminate the concept of freedom. It is the President that defines what is and is not legal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is the President that appoints the officers who command the military. It is these same military officers operating under military law that decide the fate of those who are arrested tried by the military tribunals. Holding American citizens without the benefit of rights under civil law is not only a form of abduction, it is a subjugation of judicial law. A fundamental principle of law is the idea that what is not permitted directly is also not permitted indirectly. Since the concept of law is a fundamental part of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, the jailing of Americans without redress represents a violation of the oath taken by our President and our military.

Unless something has changed without the American people knowing it, within America power changes hands when the public makes the decision through the political vote. The fact is that it appears that America has not seen such an abusive and oblique wielding of power like this since Watergate. When the power begins to shift there will be an accounting. I don't want to see another American leader disgraced. None of us need that. I just hope that our President has wise and honorable people personally advising him.

Mr. President, before it is too late please charge and put all of our American citizens being detained on trial or release them immediately.

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