Defense lawyers in the US are demanding the Obama Administration bring captured Libyan detainee Abu Anas al-Liby before a federal judge and appoint him a defense counsel, saying there is no legal basis not to do so.
Liby was captured outside his home by US troops over the weekend, and is currently being held on a warship in the Mediterranean Sea, where he is subject to interrogation by US troops and has no access to a lawyer.
Administration officials are arguing the exact contrary on the matter, arguing that there is no legal basis to not keep a captive indefinitely in military custody at sea, and that therefore President Obama can keep him in a legal black hole as long as he wants, since a ship in international waters is neither US territory nor the territory of any other nation.
The Geneva Convention requires that “prisoners of war” must be held on land, exactly for this reason, and while the administration made some vague references to Liby’s capture being in keeping with the ongoing global war, they have yet to call him a “prisoner of war.”
That's the new Guantanamo at sea, the international waters are full of sharks. If the family of whoever asked about the body, they will answer, he is swimming with the fishes. Like the old time "Chicago" mafia would say.
Keeping prisoners at sea has other advantages as well. It is easy to get rid of them in the same way Bin Laden was disposed, or in shallower oceans, to chum them in a garbage disposal and pump them out to the sharks.
You are being reported in accordance with Patriot Act provisions and specifically your initial and recurrent briefings regarding 1CFR413 for revealing classified information. No person has posted here the actual and final disposition of OBL. Collect none of your things and await instructions now.
a ship in international waters is neither US territory nor the territory of any other nation.
Then I take it any other nation that gets a hair across their ass could just pull up and put a torpedo in the side of the ship with no repercussions as it is nobodies ship.
Very well put, Jack, very well indeed.
Lewis Carroll for president 2016, anyone?
Might as well as he seems to have written the script for the last few incumbents.