[alpos]

Note that this does not apply to US citizens. US citizens, even those accused of terrorism, still retain their legal rights under US law. That is what citizenship in any country, is.

Can those rights be violated? Yes, governments do bad things all the time. But that is not the same as a foreign national participating in Al-Qaeda training camps and meeting with Osama bin Laden. No nation on Earth has a strong history of giving full citizenship legal rights to foreign nationals and/or enemy combatants captured in a warzone.

Hicks was also returned to Australia to be dealt with by his own government, where presumably he then did retain his legal rights as a citizen of Australia. And at that point it would indeed be a violation on part of Australia if they did not treat him as any citizen of their nation should be treated.

All of that said, Guantanamo has still been a completely broken and messed up situation. We the people of the US owe it to ourselves and the rest of the world to hold our government accountable for that and not allow it to happen again.

It's just if you are wanting to say that the US treatment of it's citizens has been on par with China's treatment of it's citizens, your case may be better served by finding a more direct example.

[sofixa]

> Can those rights be violated? Yes, governments do bad things all the time. But that is not the same as a foreign national participating in Al-Qaeda training camps and meeting with Osama bin Laden. No nation on Earth has a strong history of giving full citizenship legal rights to foreign nationals and/or enemy combatants captured in a warzone.

You're aware that the US actually kidnapped random people because they had the misfortune of using the wrong watch type or having the same name as an alleged terrorist, right? They didn't "capture enemy combatants in a warzone".

> Note that this does not apply to US citizens. US citizens, even those accused of terrorism, still retain their legal rights under US law. That is what citizenship in any country, is.

And also murdered US citizens abroad that were alleged to have ties to terrorists, without due trial.

[alpos]

The specific people referenced in the post I was responding to were not US citizens and should not be expected to be granted legal rights equal to US citizens.

> Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001 by the Afghan Northern Alliance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hicks

>He was captured in March 2002 by Pakistani forces during a raid at Faisalabad, Pakistan. He was held in Islamabad for two months before being turned over the United States forces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghassan_al-Sharbi

As I said, they were captured as enemy combatants, in a warzone. The circumstances of Sharbi's capture are much more questionable. But from the US's perspective, an ally turned him over as a captured enemy combatant.

It's all questionable and stupid, of course. But the question of their status at the time is relevant to the question of whether the US "vanishes" it's own citizens. These two were not citizens, so what happened to them does not support the case that the US is just as bad as China on that point.

No nation on Earth has a history of treating such captives as full citizens entitled to the same legal rights as it's own people. But maybe that's what we all would want. That's a fair point to argue, separately.

However, that is not the point the person I was responding to was making. Which is part of why I say the examples they offered were ineffective as support for their point.

You may find it helpful to practice re-reading and making sure you understand the case a post is making before responding to it.

You and I clearly agree that what the US did in Guantanamo was bad. You and I also agree that the US can, has, and may yet still violate the rights of it's own citizens as well as the rights of people who are not it's citizens, even in situations where it has signed treaties with those people's nations. And the US government should definitely be held accountable whenever it does something like that.

None of that changes the observation that the US's failure to give full citizen legal rights to Ghassan al Sharbi and David Matthew Hicks, people who were not US citizens, does not make a good supporting example to the case for the US being just as bad as China about "vanishing" it's own citizens.

You are, of course, free to offer concrete examples which would better make that case. That is essentially what I was opening the door for. But here you seem to be responding more to an emotion evoked by how I said something rather than the point I was actually making.

[ROTMetro]

The majority of criminal cases in the USA result in a plea agreement. The majority of plea agreements take away a persons right to access to the Courts (taking away Constitutional protects. They claim that you CAN still access in certain constitutional situations but if you try both the lower court and Prosecutor will threaten you with revoking your plea if you pursue an appeal to higher courts. Source: that's how it went down in my situation). Plea agreements were unconstitutional for the majority of the existence of the USA but somehow later became constitutional (even though our system of law are required to respect precedence). While for appearance purposes some limited constitutional rights remain, for all practical purposes anyone convicted via plea has their constitutional rights to the courts removed. In addition, the Federal Court system only allows 14 days from sentencing to file an appeal. 14 days, including days being transferred from court to a Federal Detention Center to your final destination seems extremely unreasonable. Again, it was unlimited until recent history, but it was decided it needed to be 14 days for financial reasons (too many people were accessing their constitutional right to the court and clogging up the system).