Indefinite Detention and Assassination: "Clock Back to Pre-Magna Carta Times"

ProPublica reports: "The White House is preparing an Executive Order on indefinite detention that will provide periodic reviews of evidence against dozens of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, according to several administration officials."

In an ABC interview, Attorney General Eric Holder has publicly said the United States wants to "neutralize" the Yemen-based Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is said to be the first U.S. citizen added to a CIA list of targets for killing. See Democracy Now report

BRUCE FEIN

Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General and General Counsel to the Federal Communications Commission under President Reagan and is author of the new book American Empire: Before the Fall. He said today: "The American Empire has pushed the due process clock back to pre-Magna Carta times. The new national slogan is, 'Anything and everything for professed safety, but nothing for liberty or freedom.'"

MARJORIE COHN
Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and author of the new book The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse. She said today: "Indefinite detention violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty we have ratified which makes it part of U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. If there is probable cause that Guantanamo detainees have committed a crime, they should be brought to trial; if not, they should be released. Targeted assassination, or willful killing, constitutes a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, punishable as a war crime under the U.S. War Crimes Act."