Judge Rules Against Transferring Yemeni Terrorists to a Foreign Country

The Urban Grind (scan down to first post of March 17th) has the dope, which I haven't seen anywhere else today:

Lawyers for the Yemenis are worried the government will try to move them from the Guantanamo Bay facility to another country in order to “warehouse them in a prison, provide them with no legal process and, in effect, avoid the American court process altogether,� Marc Falkoff, an attorney for the detainees, said Sunday.

U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer’s ruling Saturday on an emergency petition blocks any attempt to move the Yemenis until a hearing is held on their lawyers’ request for at least 30 days notice if their clients are to be transferred.

She adds:

Now call me unsophisticated, but why should people wishing to destroy us and our way of life be defended within a system they are trying to destroy?

I think we need to have a debate on the limits of "civilization," and the still-robust need for the civilized to occasionally act in reasonably savage manner -- against those who are themselves made monsters by their own choices.

Via Instapundit comes this related thought by The Volokh Conspiracy, regarding the Iranian government's savage-yet-appropriate execution of one of the most vile serial killers ever known:

I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way.

And that's precisely why I support torturing those who are either caught red-handed committing terrorism or are well-known, indisputable leaders of the movement. If inflicting pain on these bastards can lead to one tip that catches another terrorist or even an entire cell -- thus sparing the lives of at least three or four innocent people, and perhaps several dozen (perhaps a thousand!) -- I say that's worth a few broken fingers.

And, to be quite honest, even if the torture doesn't produce useful information -- it's still rough justice. Those who step outside the most basic rules of humanity have no cause to complain when humanity decides to suspend its basic rules as regards them.

posted by Ace at 05:14 PM

| Access Comments