Report on USA Patriot Act Alleges Civil Rights Violations (NY Times, July 20, 2003, registration required): A report by internal investigators at the Justice Department has identified dozens of recent cases in which department employees have been accused of serious civil rights and civil liberties violations involving enforcement of the sweeping federal antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.
How singularly unsurprising.
The report said that in the six-month period that ended on June 15, the inspector general's office had received 34 complaints of civil rights and civil liberties violations by department employees that it considered credible, including accusations that Muslim and Arab immigrants in federal detention centers had been beaten. The accused workers are employed in several of the agencies that make up the Justice Department, with most of them assigned to the Bureau of Prisons, which oversees federal penitentiaries and detention centers.
Only 34 complaints that the department considers "credible"? My. One wonders how many they received that they decided to discount, for whatever reason. All things considered, "34 complaints" sounds drasticaly understated, frankly.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Barbara Comstock, said tonight that the department "takes its obligations very seriously to protect civil rights and civil liberties, and the small number of credible allegations will be thoroughly investigated."
HA.
The report draws no broad conclusions about the extent of abuses by Justice Department employees, although it suggests that the relatively small staff of the inspector general's office has been overwhelmed by accusations of abuse, many filed by Muslim or Arab inmates in federal detention centers. The inspector general said that from Dec. 16 through June 15, his office received 1,073 complaints "suggesting a Patriot Act-related" abuse of civil rights or civil liberties. The report suggested that hundreds of the accusations were easily dismissed as not credible or impossible to prove. But of the remainder, 272 were determined to fall within the inspector general's jurisdiction, with 34 raising "credible Patriot Act violations on their face."
And both the higher numbers sound far more likely than the "34" complaints judged credible.
One wonders if these reports about the abuses the PATRIOT act has allowed will encourage Congress to finds its collective spine, repeal the act (or at least significant portions thereof) and actually exercise the oversight of the Justice Department that they are supposed to have. For example, Congress directly and explicitly told Justice that they were not allowed to arrest and imprison people for indefinite periods of time; they explicitly refused to allow that provision into the Patriot act itself. Yet Ashcroft decided that it should be done anyway, signed a directive making it so, and Congress has done ... nothing. Not said a word, not inquired as to why Justice is doing something they were explicitly told they could not do, not inquired of the president why he is allowing such things ... they have done exactly nothing.
If nothing else, perhaps seeing all these abuses will give Congress enough courage to keep Patriot Act II from becoming law. (Not that such actions will stop Our Lord High Minister of Injustice; clearly, he regards himself as being beyond such petty things as congressional oversight. Unfortunately, apparently, so does Congress.)
Posted by iain at July 21, 2003 12:53 PMComments
