Reno files terrorist rights brief in hopes of returning to failed lawfare model

Washington Post:

Former attorney general Janet Reno has taken the unusual step of openly criticizing the Bush administration's anti-terrorism strategy -- joining seven other former Justice Department officials in warning that the indefinite detention of U.S. terrorism suspects could become commonplace unless the courts intervene.

In a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the case of alleged enemy combatant Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, the former prosecutors assert that criminal courts are well equipped to prosecute terrorism suspects while guaranteeing the constitutional rights of defendants arrested on U.S. soil.

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In their brief, Reno and the other former Justice Department officials said: "The government is essentially asserting the right to hold putative enemy combatants arrested in the United States indefinitely whenever it decides not to prosecute those people criminally -- perhaps because it would be too difficult to obtain a conviction, perhaps because a motion to suppress evidence would raise embarrassing facts about the government's conduct, or perhaps for other reasons."

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As enemy combatants they are not entitled to a trial. They will be released at the end of the war. If the war goes on for a 100 years, they will have a long detention, but they still will not have a right to a trial. The best reason for not prosecuting them is that in the discovery process they will learn the sources and methods of our intelligence and pass that own to others as they did in the trials under Reno tenure. That is how Osama found out we were monitoring his satellite phone. Reno seems oblivious to this problem, even though it happened on her watch.