If this man is not a terrorist and no criminal case can be brought against him, then we can add him to the long list of illegally held
former suspects in this country.
I really don't think most Americans have a clue about just how dangerous are the precedents our government is setting these days. And when no one cares or even notices abuses like this, it's certain they will continue and increase in number.
From the article:
"Those 1,200 were taken in on pseudo-immigration charges," said Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch. "It really is a black mark on the U.S. and it undermines our intelligence gathering because it creates distrust between law enforcement officials and communities where those officials should be building rapport and trust."
"People lost years of their lives and families were ripped apart in the frenzy of fear," said Kerri Sherlock, director of policy and planning at the Rights Working Group, an advocacy organization in Washington D.C. "Do we really want to be a country that locks people up without guaranteeing their basic constitutional rights?"
Let's see ... they were rounded up during a panic, and arrests were made on immigration charges that were patently bogus from the start. This administration counted on the
fear of the people to permit illegal detentions without protest.
And to cover their actions from there, a wide variety of police agencies have surely relied upon Americans' habit of
forgetting everyone who is incarcerated in this country.
Looks like they figured correctly on every count.
Once a person is imprisoned in America, it's like s/he ceases to exist in the minds of most citizens.
What disturbs me most about Partovi's case is that drawing attention to situations like his does not even begin to address the ironically outrageous injustice of untold thousands of citizens AND aliens who are locked away and forgotten in our prisons
for the same sorts of crimes that politicians get away with on a regular basis.The government's reliance on invoking its own fraudulent "drug war" has allowed officials to wrongfully imprison individuals for a very long time, for starters, and this practice predates the current fear-and-terror atmosphere. But there are also the many types of
sex crimes for which "regular people" are jailed while
politicians caught doing the same thing simply resign and seek refuge in a "rehab clinic."It's like we don't even EXPECT charges to be brought against such offenders as Foley -- like resignation from their seat in government is punishment enough no matter how serious their crimes are!
This situation is more than disgraceful -- it's a
deadly serious threat to every one of us! And there is no end of these practices in sight because almost no one is even protesting them.
We should all heed Rev. Neimoller's warning, often quoted by those who would remind us of Nazi abuses. If we keep standing by silently when various groups among us are rounded up and taken away, who WILL be left to speak up for us when they finally come for US?......
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