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For Immediate Release
February, 19 2010, 02:25pm EDT
Contact:
Mandy Simon, (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org
Broad Coalition Urges Senate to Defeat Legislation to Block Funding for Civilian Trials in 9/11 Cases
WASHINGTON
A broad coalition of human rights and civil liberties groups sent a letter to the Senate today urging defeat of a bill that would prohibit the use of Justice Department funds to prosecute the accused 9/11 plotters in federal court. The bill, introduced earlier this month by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), is aimed at forcing the Obama administration to use the unconstitutional and discredited military commissions to try these cases. Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) has introduced a similar companion bill in the House.
In its letter to the Senate, the coalition stated, "This legislation would needlessly tie the President's hands in resolving the problem of Guantanamo and disposing of cases in ways that comport with human rights principles and the rule of law. The legislation would restrict the Obama administration's ability to employ one of the most valuable counterterrorism tools available - criminal prosecutions in regular federal courts."
In November, Attorney General Eric Holder made the correct decision when he announced that the trials would be held in federal court in New York. Some members of Congress are putting pressure on the Obama administration to consider trying these cases in the discredited military commission system. Both the Senate and House bills would obstruct the Obama administration's plans to prosecute the 9/11 suspects in federal court by forcing theses important cases into the military commissions system, which has secured only three convictions in more than five years.
Below is the full text of the letter and a full list of signatories:
February 19, 2010
RE: Oppose S. 2977, Which Would Bar Prosecution of Some Terrorism Defendants in Federal
Criminal Courts
Dear Senator:
We urge you to oppose S. 2977, which was recently introduced by Senator Graham (R-SC) and would prohibit the Department of Justice from using funds to prosecute the alleged planners or conspirators in the September 11, 2001 attacks in regular Article III federal courts. These are the same federal courts where the Department of Justice regularly tries and convicts defendants charged with international terrorism crimes. This legislation would needlessly tie the President's hands in resolving the problem of Guantanamo and disposing of cases in ways that comport with human rights principles and the rule of law. The legislation would restrict the Obama administration's ability to employ one of the most valuable counterterrorism tools available - criminal prosecutions in regular federal courts.
There is no substantive difference between S. 2977 and Senator Graham's amendment to the Commerce, Justice Science appropriation bill that was rejected by the full Senate by a vote of 54-45 only three months ago.
The Graham legislation would be a sharp break from current law, and is very different from the Guantanamo transfer restrictions that passed the Senate and were signed into law in 2009. Each of those restrictions prohibits most transfers to the United States of detainees held at Guantanamo, but exempts transfer of detainees for prosecution. By contrast, S. 2977 would block the Department of Justice from access to the most effective courts for criminal prosecution. Even if you voted for the transfer restrictions that were eventually enacted, you can and should oppose S. 2977.
S. 2977 would hinder efforts to put to rest a legacy of a failed detention policy. The detentions at Guantanamo Bay are a blot on the reputation of the United States that harms U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. There is widespread agreement among national security and foreign policy experts-including General David Petraeus, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and five former Secretaries of State from both parties - that closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility is essential to U.S. counterterrorism efforts and to repairing the standing of the United States as a country committed to human rights and the rule of law.
The legislation would deny the Obama administration a highly effective prosecution tool-trial before regular federal courts. In fact, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote last week that "the Bush Administration used the criminal justice system to convict more than 300 individuals of terrorism related crimes." The Federal Bureau of Prisons has also proven fully capable of securely detaining individuals convicted of the most serious crimes of terrorism, such as co conspiracy in the 9/11 attacks, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, without harm to the surrounding communities-and, of course, without escape. Passage of this legislation, by preventing prosecution of accused terrorists in regular federal criminal courts, would amount to an abdication of Congress' obligation to protect America.
As Attorney General Holder recently wrote:
The criminal justice system has proven to be one of the most effective weapons available to our government for both incapacitating terrorists and collecting intelligence from them. Removing this highly effective weapon from our arsenal would be as foolish as taking our military and intelligence options off the table against al-Qaeda, and as dangerous.
Adhering to the rule of law both protects human rights and enhances national security. We urge you to oppose S. 2977.
Sincerely,
Alliance for Justice
American Civil Liberties Union
Amnesty International USA
Appeal for Justice
Center for Constitutional Rights
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Human Rights First
Human Rights Watch
International Justice Network
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
New Security Action
Open Society Policy Center
People For the American Way
The Constitution Project
United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
After Visit, US Lawmakers Say ‘Cruel Collective Punishment’ of Cuba Must End Immediately
Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Jonathan Jackson described Trump's blockade of the island as "effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country that has produced permanent damage."
Apr 06, 2026
After returning from a delegation trip to Cuba, US Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Jonathan Jackson on Sunday renewed calls for President Donald Trump to end his illegal fuel blockade of the island, which they described as "cruel collective punishment."
The pair of progressive lawmakers were the first to visit the island since Trump imposed the blockade in January in a bid to cripple the island's economy as part of an effort to overthrow its government, or, in the president's words, "take" the island.
Almost no oil has been allowed to enter for more than three months, which Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Jackson (D-Ill.) described as "effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country—that has produced permanent damage."
"We witnessed firsthand premature babies in incubators, weighing just two pounds, who are at tremendous risk because their ventilators and incubators cannot function without electricity," they said. "Children cannot attend school because there is no fuel for them or their teachers to travel. Cancer patients cannot receive lifesaving treatments because of a lack of medications."
"There is a water shortage because there is little electricity to pump water," they continued. "Businesses have closed. Families cannot keep food refrigerated, and food production on the island has dropped to just 10% of the people’s needs."
The oil blockade is an escalation of more than 60 years of punitive economic warfare by the US against Cuba, imposed through an embargo that has limited Cuba's ability to trade with the rest of the world and hampered its economic development to the tune of trillions of dollars.
Jayapal had previously visited Cuba in February 2024 on a trip with other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Since her last time in Havana, she said, "There's such a big difference."
"So many of the streets of this beautiful city were deserted. People were already lining up for food," she said in an interview with the Cuban outlet Belly of the Beast. "I don't think that any American wants to create this kind of devastation for the Cuban children, for the babies, for the moms, for the people."
She said the phrase "collective punishment," while accurate, almost felt "too technocratic" to describe what she witnessed.
"We are strangling the Cuban people," Jayapal said.
The United Nations General Assembly has voted 33 times to call for the end of the embargo since 1993.
In February, a group of UN experts condemned Trump's fuel blockade as "a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order" and an "extreme form of unilateral economic coercion."
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has acknowledged having talks with Trump in recent weeks in order to negotiate an end to the embargo and threats of further aggression.
The Cuban government has taken actions that the lawmakers described as "signs that Cuba is changing." It has released more than 2,000 prisoners, announced economic reforms to allow more involvement of American businesses, and allowed the FBI to investigate Cuban troops' lethal shooting of five armed Cuban exiles as they approached in a speedboat in February.
While hardly softening his threats to Cuba, which he continued to insist was “finished,” Trump last week allowed a Russian oil tanker to dock on the island without incident and deliver around 700,000 barrels of much-needed oil.
But the lawmakers said it's not enough. Jackson, noting the "generosity" of Cuba as a provider of medical treatment around the world, said the US must allow food and fuel to be allowed to return to the island "so that the Cuban people can continue to rise."
Jayapal said that when they spoke with Diaz-Canel, he expressed "a real desire for a real negotiation" with the US, but that he also expressed "sadness" and "frustration" at what was being done to his country.
"These kinds of sanctions, embargoes, they don't get to the government. They hurt the people," Jayapal said. "Perhaps the American people don't understand the violence of an economic sanction versus the violence of dropping a bomb."
Jackson—whose father, the late Rev. Jesse Jackson, took many trips to Cuba during his life—described America's treatment of the nation’s people as a “crucifixion.”
"Americans would not want to see what I saw in that hospital," Jackson said, describing a malnourished baby named Alejandro, whom he said was "fighting for life."
Due to the intermittent power surges caused by the lack of fuel, he said, "We didn't know when the incubator was going to start working."
"That's an act of war," he said. "We have to put an end to that."
He added that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, himself a Cuban-American who has long sought to bring about regime change, "should come before the Congress and explain his policy."
In late March, Jayapal introduced legislation that would block Trump from conducting military action against Cuba without congressional authorization. She said she'd continue to push for bills to block Trump from launching a war and to push for sanctions relief.
The Trump administration has portrayed its economic warfare as part of an effort to "liberate" the Cuban people from an oppressive government.
But the lawmakers, who met with wide swaths of Cuban society—including business and religious leaders, humanitarian groups, and civil society organizations—said that "Cubans across the political spectrum," including anti-government dissidents, expressed similar feelings.
"Across all sectors, there is agreement," they said. "This illegal blockade must end immediately."
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‘Another Outrageous, Criminal Act’: US and Israel Bomb University Known as ‘MIT of Iran’
Iran's first vice president called the attack a new "symbol of Trump's madness and ignorance."
Apr 06, 2026
A wave of US-Israeli airstrikes on Monday hit and extensively damaged Sharif University of Technology, a leading Iranian educational institution that is widely known as "the MIT of Iran" and seen as one of the world's top engineering schools.
The attack on the Tehran university—one of dozens of education sites bombed by the US and Israel since they launched their war on Iran in late February—sparked outrage inside Iran and around the world. Mohammad Reza Aref, an engineer currently serving as Iran's first vice president, said the attack on Sharif University "is a symbol of [US President Donald] Trump's madness and ignorance."
"He fails to understand that Iran's knowledge is not embedded in concrete to be destroyed by bombs; the true fortress is the will of our professors and elites," Aref wrote. "No barbarity in history has ever been able to strip science from the Iranian people. Science is rooted in our souls, and this fortress will not crumble."
The National Iranian American Council called the bombing "another outrageous, criminal act in an illegal war."
"This was a center of learning, not a military target," the group wrote on social media, highlighting video footage showing a building in ruins. "The increasing use of the Gaza playbook in Iran is deeply disturbing and will only deepen insecurity for the US and Israel. End this war."
US Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), the lone Iranian American in Congress, noted that Sharif University has "produced a huge number of engineers who’ve gone on to Silicon Valley and founded some of the most successful American tech companies."
"Why are we bombing a university in a city of 10 million people?" Ansari asked.
Another outrageous, criminal act in an illegal war: U.S.-Israeli strikes have bombed one of the world’s most prestigious universities in Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. This was a center of learning, not a military target. The increasing use of the Gaza playbook in… pic.twitter.com/GE6J8WhgMC
— NIAC (@NIACouncil) April 6, 2026
Al Jazeera's Tohid Asadi reported from Tehran that the university was "severely hit, with extensive damage reported in the compound's mosque and laboratories."
Vira Ameli, an Iranian global health researcher and lecturer at the University of Oxford, decried the US-Israeli strike on Sharif University, where she spent time as a postdoctoral fellow.
"To wake to the news of this war crime, at a distance and unable to return, is difficult to articulate," Ameli wrote. "And yet history has made one thing clear: Iran is not a country undone by bombardment."
Iranian authorities say US-Israeli attacks have hit at least 30 of the nation's universities, including the Isfahan University of Technology and the Iran University of Science and Technology. The US and Israel have justified some of the attacks by claiming the universities were involved in military-related activities.
"Would American and Israeli leaders consider their own equivalent institutions fair game? Of course not," journalist Natasha Lennard wrote in a column for The Intercept last week. "By stated US and Israeli rationale, however, were Iran able to launch airstrikes on American soil, direct ties to the U.S. and Israeli military-industrial complex would make valid targets of at least the University of California, Berkeley; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Johns Hopkins University, among dozens of other schools."
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'The Agents Were Lying': ICE Exposed Yet Again by Video of Minneapolis Shooting
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said "bare due diligence" would have exposed ICE officers' falsehoods.
Apr 06, 2026
Video footage obtained by The New York Times has exposed lies told by two federal immigration enforcement agents about the circumstances leading up to a non-fatal shooting in Minneapolis that occurred on January 14.
According to a Monday report from the Times, the video directly contradicts claims made by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials that they were attacked by assailants armed with a shovel and a broom for around three minutes before the agents opened fire and wounded one of the attackers.
"Instead, the confrontation depicted in the video lasts about 12 seconds and shows two men struggling with the agent," reported the Times. "It shows no sustained attack with a shovel."
Federal prosecutors had initially pursued assault charges against Venezuelan national Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who was shot in the leg by the ICE officers during the January confrontation, and fellow Venezuelan national Alfredo Aljorna.
However, the government abruptly dropped charges against the two men in February, and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons acknowledged that two federal officers appear “to have made untruthful statements” about the incident.
The Times noted that the government had access to the video of the shooting hours after it took place.
However, one source told the paper that prosecutors didn't watch the video until three weeks after they filed charges against Sosa-Celis and Aljorna, and instead relied on "the ICE agent’s statement and an FBI agent’s affidavit describing the footage."
This revelation prompted a rebuke from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who told the Times that "bare due diligence would have shown that the agents were lying."
Trump administration officials have come under fire in recent weeks for lying about shootings involving federal immigration officials, such as when former US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem falsely claimed that slain Minneapolis intensive care nurse Alex Pretti was aiming “to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement."
In reality, video footage showed Pretti never drew his handgun during his confrontation with federal immigration officers, while also clearly showing that officers disarmed him before they opened fire.
Noem also falsely claimed that slain ICE observer Renee Good had attempted "an act of domestic terrorism" by trying to run over a federal immigration officer with her car, even though footage clearly showed Good turning her vehicle away from the officer in an attempt to get away from the scene.
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