The significance of this case can hardly be gainsaid. The Executive Branch argues, and the lower court held, that although Congress has not suspended the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus for U.S. citziens, the United States military may nonetheless detain an American citizen in an overseas American prison indefinitely, or dispatch him to his death at the hands of another sovereign, with no obligation to demonstrate the lawfulness of either his imprisonment or his threatened transfer.
From here.
Who is this guy and what precedent is he seeking to overturn?
The case involves Mohammad Munaf, a native of iraq who became a U.S. citizen in 2000. He is now being held in a U.S. military prison, Camp Cropper, near the airport in Baghdad, Iraq. The military maintains that he is being held, not by U.S. forces, as such, but rather by the international coalition of military forces operating in Iraq. It is that situation (along with Munaf's conviction in an Iraqi court, followed by a death sentence) that has led the U.S. government to insist that American courts have no authority to hear a challenge to Munaf's detention and his impending transfer to Iraqi officials to carry out the death sentence.
More here.
U.S. citizenship doesn't mean much when your dead. You can't even vote; unless you live in Cicero, Illinois. Maybe they'll bury him there. I'll bet he'd vote for the Democrats and be a reliable voice for organized labor. On the plus side, he got more due process than Jose Padilla, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, and Yaser Esam Hamdi.
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