Qualified Immunity, Unqualified Doubt

[groovedaddy]

The Supreme Court’s ruling Tuesday on the use of the material witness statute in combating terrorists was a victory for former Attorney General John Ashcroft and those who would shield Bush administration officials from accountability for their actions after Sept. 11, 2001.

But the 8-to-0 vote (Justice Elena Kagan was recused because of her involvement as solicitor general) was hardly as unanimous as it seemed and did not resolve whether the material witness law was misused under President George W. Bush. Some justices seemed deeply concerned about the use of the statute.

The question before the justices was: Should Mr. Ashcroft be held personally liable for brazenly misusing the material witness statute to hold an American citizen in brutal conditions on the pretext that he was a witness in a case in which he was never called to testify?

The Justice Department arrested Abdullah al-Kidd in March 2003 before he boarded a plane to Saudi Arabia, where he was going to work on his doctorate in Islamic studies. For 16 days, he was treated like an enemy of the state — shackled, held in high-security cells with the lights on 24 hours a day and sometimes humiliated by strip searches.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/opinion/01wed1.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211