Ratner, Michael - short clip - CoupdEtat
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| - | They were first denying the writ of habeas corpus. | 0:00 |
| Then they were setting up, if they picked someone up, | 0:03 | |
| a military commission for trying them. | 0:06 | |
| And then of course it had incredibly draconian | 0:08 | |
| secrecy provisions, and it had a death penalty | 0:11 | |
| and it had execution without a majority | 0:14 | |
| of the even handpicked military jury. | 0:16 | |
| So the scenario, which wasn't fanciful, | 0:20 | |
| was that people could be picked up, | 0:24 | |
| tried secretly in the military commission, | 0:27 | |
| sentenced to execution, executed, | 0:29 | |
| and tossed off some aircraft carrier. | 0:31 | |
| So essentially it was a completely secret system of justice | 0:34 | |
| that went against everything certainly | 0:40 | |
| not just that we've been taught in American law schools, | 0:42 | |
| but everything in international law, | 0:44 | |
| everything in the Geneva Conventions, | 0:46 | |
| everything in really, I mean, you could almost say | 0:48 | |
| as time immemorial, I mean it's just, was unheard of. | 0:50 | |
| The provision that was not noticed this much was what | 0:54 | |
| I would call the indefinite preventive detention issue. | 0:57 | |
| People focused heavily on the trials and heavily on habeas, | 1:02 | |
| as did we at the center although we were aware | 1:05 | |
| of the other one, and what the order actually said | 1:07 | |
| is the president, as commander in chief, | 1:10 | |
| can direct the secretary of defense to pick up | 1:12 | |
| any non-citizen, later applied to citizens, | 1:15 | |
| but any non-citizen anywhere in the world | 1:18 | |
| and hold them indefinitely, forever, until the president | 1:21 | |
| decided they would either go to trial or just be held. | 1:28 | |
| In other words, they never had to be tried. | 1:31 | |
| So even though there's this trial, quote, trial system, | 1:32 | |
| there's a system in which they're held forever. | 1:36 | |
| So it's a law, it's forever detention, without habeas again. | 1:39 | |
| So you're talking about, I've described it | 1:43 | |
| as essentially a coup d'etat in America, | 1:46 | |
| which is to say it was the complete takeover | 1:48 | |
| of any kind of due process or judicial system | 1:51 | |
| or protection of a human being's or individual rights | 1:54 | |
| by one single person and that was the president. | 1:57 |
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