From The Consortium News
By Robert Parry

The U.S. military commission’s split guilty verdict on Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, has drawn praise from the Bush administration and criticism from civil rights groups, but what has been overlooked is the chilling message that “the Hamdan principle” sends about future prosecutions in the “war on terror.”

This new principle holds that anyone – regardless of how tangential a connection to actual acts of terrorism – can be prosecuted through the kangaroo court of the military commissions and be sentenced to a long prison term (or even death). Though Hamdan is a Yemeni, the principle would seem to apply to U.S citizens, too.

In effect, a parallel legal system has been created outside the U.S. Constitution in which the President can order someone locked up indefinitely simply by calling the person an “enemy combatant” and then subjecting the person to what amounts to a “star chamber” proceeding that permits use of secret evidence and coerced testimony.

Though some legal experts insist these special courts don’t apply to U.S. citizens, the language of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and a recent federal court ruling make clear that President George W. Bush’s asserted wartime power to order indefinite detentions covers citizens and non-citizens.

In July, the conservative-dominated U.S. Appeals Court in Richmond, Virginia, opened the door for Bush or a successor to throw American citizens as well as non-citizens into a legal black hole by designating them “enemy combatants,” even if they have engaged in no violent act and are living on U.S. soil.

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