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A Glimmer of Good News – Ashcroft Can Be Sued

September 5th, 2009 · No Comments · Abuse of power, Bush, Legal, Terrorism

Among all the propecia price dismal news emanating from Washington, here is some Silagra buy generic levitra good news: the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that Attorney Buy Viagra General purchase viagra online | where to buy cialis | order online levitra Ashcroft abused his power after 9/11 in arresting Buy Antibiotics medications and detaining Buy cheap Female Viagra Online people without probable cause. As important as the ruling is

the strong condemnation of the actions. Here is the story as reported by the LA Times.


Ashcroft buy cheap ampicillin buy Amoxil generic buy diflucan can be sued over arrests, appeals court rules

Ashcroft

A 9th Circuit panel levaquin buyviagra | buy cialis overseas | buy levitra drugs says the ex-attorney general violated the rights of citizens held as material witnesses without cause after 9/11. Rights advocates praise the ruling in Abdullah Kidd’s case.

  • By Carol J. Williams
  • LA Times

Septe

mber 5, 2009

  • Then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft violated the rights of U.S. citizens in the fevered wake of the Sept.

    11 terrorist attacks by ordering arrests on material witness warrants when the government lacked probable cause, a federal appeals court said in a scathing opinion buy cialis soft Friday.

  • In a ruling that said Ashcroft could be sued for prosecutorial buy viagra online discount abuses, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the former attorney general immunity from liability for how he used the material witness viagra soft warrants in national security

    investigations.
    Members of the panel, all appointees of Republican presidents, characterized Ashcroft’s detention policy as "repugnant to buy amoxil the Constitution, and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters levitra brand price of our national history."
    Civil liberties advocates cheered the ruling in the case brought by Kansas-born Muslim convert Abdullah Kidd, saying it spotlighted excesses committed by the Bush administration in the post-9/11 scramble to thwart terrorist plots.

  • Cialis Professional

"The court made it very clear today that . . . Ashcroft’s use of the federal material witness law circumvented the Constitution," said Lee Gelernt, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued Kidd’s case. "Regardless of your rank or title, you can’t escape liability if you personally created and oversaw a policy that deliberately violates the law."

The ruling could allow levitra cost Kidd’s suit for damages to proceed to lasix order trial if the government doesn’t appeal to a larger 9th Circuit panel or seek Supreme Court review.

A spokesman for Ashcroft, Mark Corallo, didn’t return phone calls.

Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller said: "We will review the court’s decision and make a determination in the future as to what the government’s next step will be."

Although the ruling denied immunity kamagra to buy Buy Nolvadex Online Jelly”>Cialis Jelly to Ashcroft, the buy cialis government would probably be responsible viagera for covering any successful damage claims brought by those found to have been wrongly arrested.

Kidd, a former University of Idaho running back whose birth name was Lavoni T. Kidd, sued Ashcroft after he was arrested at Washington Dulles International Airport en route to a Saudi scholarship program in March 2003.


He was handcuffed, strip-searched and shuttled can you buy viagra in stores among interrogations in Virginia, Oklahoma and Idaho before being released 16 days later and ordered to surrender his passport and live with his wife and in-laws in Nevada.

The arrest cheap levitra generic led to Kidd being denied a security clearance and losing his job with a government contractor.


In his 2005 complaint, Kidd noted that then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, in an appearance Viagra Jelly before a congressional subcommittee during Kidd’s detention, had pointed to his arrest and that of confessed 9/11 masterm ind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as evidence of government progress

in reining in terrorists.
"To this day, the government has never explained why the director of the FBI would tell the United States Congress that the arrest of Mr.

al Kidd — supposedly a witness — represented one of the government’s noteworthy recent successes in the war on terrorism," the complaint stated.

It is unclear how many U.S. citizens were picked up on material witness warrants in the sweep conducted by national security forces after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Like the preventive detention abroad of foreign terrorism suspects and the CIA’s "extraordinary rendition" program, in which suspected enemies were whisked from foreign locales to interrogation "black sites," the material witness arrests were conducted Buy Viagra, Buy Cialis, Buy Levitra Without Buy Female Viagra Online Pharmacy No Prescription Needed Prescription where can buy viagra in secret.
At least two other prominent Muslim converts are known to have been arrested as supposed material witnesses.


Alleged would-be "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla was detained at Chicago O’Hare buy real viagra without prescription | buy cialis fast shipping | low price levitra International cytotec generic Airport and held for 3 1/2 buy amoxicillin years without charges before his 2007 conviction in an unrelated terrorism buy vardenafil case in Florida.

Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon attorney erroneously connected to the 2004 Madrid train bombings, was also arrested as a material witness and held for two weeks.

He was never charged, and has received an apology from the U.S. government as well as a $2-million settlement. amoxicillin amoxil
Constitutional law scholars applauded the 9th Circuit decision as affirmation of citizens’ rights to be free from illegal detention.

"This is really important," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law.

"This is a federal court of appeals saying that what was done here under the material witness statute was clearly a violation of the Constitution — that it was not protected by prosecutorial absolute immunity."

That means that the unknown numbers of online ampicillin wrongfully detained suspects could sue Ashcroft for damages, claiming their rights were violated, Chemerinsky said.

Georgetown Law professor David Cole said that Ashcroft purchase levitra online adopted an aggressive "preventive paradigm" after Sept. 11 designed "to incapacitate people who government officials thought suspicious but lacked evidence of any wrongdoing. They were locked up and then investigated, rather than the other way around."
Virtually all of the targets had nothing to do with terrorism, Cole said.

Online Levitra buy Brand Levitra

The Supreme Court has made a distinction between using material witness warrants to ensure someone’s appearance at trial and misusing them to detain someone to be investigated for suspected wrongdoing, the panel noted in its 98-page opinion.

The panel also cast the previous administration’s practice of detaining suspects without cause as behavior that the framers of the Constitution would have found Viagra online abhorrent.

The judges, acomplia cheap alluding to the George W.

Bush administration, said that although generic nolvadex "some confidently assert that the government has the power to arrest and detain" suspects without evidence of wrongdoing, the panel considered cialis soft such preemptive detentions amoxil Jelly”>Viagra Jelly "an best viagra online engine of political tyranny."

The opinion was written by Circuit Judge Milan D. Smith Jr., an appointee of Bush’s, whose practices buy drugs without prescription in the war on terrorism were at the heart of the case.

Circuit Judge Carlos T. Bea, a fellow Bush appointee,wrote buy ampicilin online a separate opinion partially concurring buy propecia cheap and partially dissenting.

Smith was joined fully by Senior Circuit Judge David R. Thompson, named to the bench by President Reagan.
c arol.williams@latimes.com

David G. Savage in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.

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