Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Jonathan Haifetz from the ACLU, keeping us all out of Guantanamo Bay.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Jonathan?
Well, thanks for having me on.
Really, I mean it.
You're all that's standing between civilization and the end of it at this point.
And so, much appreciated your work.
And what I mean is, we either got habeas corpus or we don't, and we do because you insist upon it.
And in this example, we have an American who is captured, I believe, by the so-called SDF, Syrian Defense Forces, which is the YPG Kurds working for the United States.
And they claim that the guy that they arrested was with ISIS.
And he was an American citizen and he was held in secret.
But then that leaked out.
And then you insisted on getting in there and getting word to him that he could have a lawyer.
And word to him that you wanted to be his lawyer, not you, but your organization, the ACLU.
And then you won.
And he is now a free man.
So, tell me everything that's going on and especially what it means for the rule of law.
Well, the case raises very important questions about the rights of citizens to be free from illegal detention at the hands of their own government.
As you mentioned, our client was held for over a year by the United States without charge in Iraq.
He was for four months at that time.
He was not even given access to a lawyer.
And then after, once he was given access to a lawyer, the government sought to block his, sought to transfer him against his will to a foreign country for further imprisonment.
And we were able to block that.
And then finally, we were able to force the government to either present its case or release him.
And the government chose to release him.
And he's now free in Bahrain.
So, it's a major victory for the client.
And it's also an important precedent, or really a series of important precedents, showing that the executive doesn't have carte blanche when it comes to the rights of American citizens.
And so, it's interesting that he wasn't charged with a crime under any criminal statute and just brought to America for, I mean, they can make a material support for terrorism case out of just about anything these days, right?
Well, it's a broad statute, and they did not charge him, which I think underscores the weakness of their evidence and the weakness of their case.
And instead, they sought to hold him indefinitely, without charge, and basically did everything in their power to avoid putting their case on in court.
And finally, when they had no other option, they gave him his freedom.
Yeah.
Well, that certainly is pretty telling.
And now, so, this guy, he was born in the United States, is that correct?
Correct.
And does he have a name, or that's a secret still, or what?
His name is still under seal to protect his privacy and dignity.
I mean, I think it's important to remember that he was unfairly and improperly tarred as an enemy combatant.
He wants his name to remain protected.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, fair enough.
I mean, at one point, it was classified secret, but I see that you're classifying it from the other direction, just in the interest of keeping it sealed, as you say, since he's been accused of such a heinous thing as essentially being a traitor to America, in a way.
Yeah, and accused, I'll say accused, without being formally charged with a crime.
I mean, if a person is charged with a crime, their name becomes public.
But he was just sort of branded through rumor and innuendo, through this made-up category of enemy combatant, and the way they used it.
And what can you tell us about where he was held, where he was arrested, first of all, or captured, and where he was held during this time?
So, I can tell you basic outlines.
He was seized when he was fleeing violence in Syria.
He was held, initially, by Kurdish forces in Syria.
And then, when they realized he was a U.S. citizen, he was handed over to Americans, who then flew him forcibly and changed to Iraq, where he was detained in Iraq for over a year, until he was released.
On an American military base there?
Correct.
And with other prisoners?
I can't discuss any further things.
I can tell you he was held in U.S. military detention in Iraq.
But, I mean, can you say if it was officially a prison, or if it was like an ad hoc?
I can't discuss any of the specific details of his imprisonment, but suffice it to say he was held by the U.S. without charge for more than a year in Iraq.
I understand.
Okay.
And then, now, I noticed one thing that you had in your press release about this was the importance of journalism in getting this story to the ACLU's attention, so that you guys could get into court and defend not just the accused, but the Bill of Rights itself, from these abuses.
And so, we have these different amendments helping to reinforce each other, the first and the fifth and the sixth here, right?
Exactly.
I think it's a combination, as you say, because without, habeas corpus is a fundamental safeguard.
And as we see in this case, through habeas corpus, our client was able to get legal representation, access to court, get a hearing in court, get orders, protecting his, multiple orders, protecting his liberty, and ultimately secure his freedom.
But those protections of habeas corpus would not have been available effectively if the government doesn't, if no one had known this person was being held, right?
So, without knowledge that the government was holding an American citizen, no petition could have been filed on his behalf.
He just simply would have been disappeared.
And at most, it would have been gas or surmise that the U.S. was holding him.
So, it was critical that the media, in particular the Daily Beast, published a story last September of 8-17 stating that the U.S. was holding an American citizen in Iraq.
Because without that, no one would have known that John Doe, an American citizen, was being held by his own government.
Right.
Well, you know, from here, it seems like the Bill of Rights is just hanging by a thread in the sense that the court could have told the ACLU that, sorry, you don't have standing to get involved here, and so no one actually has standing to speak on this guy's behalf.
That's what they told Anwar al-Awlaki's father when you guys tried to intervene, when they announced beforehand that they were going to murder Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen who was al-Qaeda propagandist there in Yemen.
I think his father tried to sue and get an injunction, and they denied that.
In this case, was it just a sympathetic judge that made the difference here?
Or was it never in question that you guys were going to be able to do this?
Well, I think, you know, until the cases ...
I think certainly the law was 100% on our side.
You never know how a judge is going to rule.
I will say it's different in that the reasoning, which we disagree with, that the court relied on, was that it was evident that the court thought that al-Awlaki didn't want a lawyer, whereas here, there was no evidence.
In fact, the evidence was to the contrary, that our client wanted a lawyer.
But absolutely, I mean, I think it was the court, and in this case, Judge Chukin, played a very important role in upholding the rights of American citizens throughout the case.
And, you know, worst case scenario, I don't think anybody who has YouTube is in doubt that al-Awlaki was guilty of some kind of material support to al-Qaeda, but that's already a felony, and they could have even attempted to arrest him and try him in federal court, but they didn't do that, even though he was a U.S. person and an American citizen in a foreign land.
So, yeah, I mean, how illegal was that, by the way, for Obama and his government to kill al-Awlaki?
And certainly it was premeditated, because they announced in the Washington Post beforehand that they were going to do it.
Yeah, well, you know, our position has been clear.
We believe that the placement of al-Awlaki on a kill list and the killing of al-Awlaki was illegal, violated federal law and the Constitution.
He did not have authority to do that.
He was not within any legitimate argument under the Constitution or international law.
And now, in this case, do you have an idea of what their plan was for him?
Because it doesn't sound like they were in a hurry to bring him to Guantanamo or send him off to Bagram or anything like that, right?
Yeah, I mean, we don't know what their plan was.
I mean, I think their plan was just delay.
We know that they did not charge him, and we know they did try to transfer him.
So I think that was their plan that they decided on, but it was a transfer, a dead-of-night transfer to another country for further custody and not a release.
And they tried to repeatedly blur that line, effectively saying, if we handed an American over to another government in chains, that's the same thing as setting an American free, and that's just not the case.
Right.
And so, you got a deal here where the government basically just gave up and said, OK, he can go and set him free in Bahrain, you say?
Correct.
And now, but he can come back to the United States a free man any time, right, because he's an American citizen?
Well, that's our view.
I mean, he certainly, you know, he has a right as an American citizen to return to the United States.
No charges have been placed against him, and that's how the system works.
And it's your position, I mean, obviously, as his legal representative, that he was just wrong place, wrong time fleeing violence and never a threat or associated with al-Qaeda or the Islamic State there?
Yeah, I mean, he denies that he committed any crime or provided anything that should have subjected him to detention.
OK, well, listen, guilt or not, he gets the rule of law, simple as that, or it could be a lot worse.
So thank you again for all your efforts here, Jonathan.
Thanks for having me on, Scott.
Appreciate it.
All right, you guys, that's Jonathan Hayfitz, senior staff attorney at the ACLU.
ACLU.org.
All right, y'all, thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
