Eric W. Dolan
Raw Story
The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously threw out a lawsuit accusing former Attorney General John Ashcroft of misusing his power by jailing a supposed terrorism witness in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In the case Ashcroft v. al Kidd, the highest court in the nationruled (PDF) 8 to 0 that Ashcroft did not clearly violate the 4th Amendment’s right against unreasonable searches and seizures in the jailing of a U.S. citizen as a potential witness.
“The Court has unfortunately let Attorney General Ashcroft off the hook, but half of the justices who participated in today’s decision expressed real questions about how the government used the material witness statute in al-Kidd’s case,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Our hope is that those questions will lead to a serious examination moving forward of the use of the statute as a tool for preventive detention.”
Abdullah al Kidd, a former University of Idaho football player, was arrested at Dulles Airport as he was boarding a plane to Saudi Arabia. Federal officials had obtained a warrant to arrest al Kidd by telling a judge that information “crucial” to a suspected terrorist’s prosecution would be lost if al Kidd boarded his flight.
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