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Enemy combatant


            
             Enemy Combatant or Violation of the Constitution.
             citizen, was arrested by the FBI at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Federal authorities sought Padilla's testimony as a material witness before a grand jury in Manhattan. He supposedly had knowledge of an Al-Qaeda plan to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the United States. He was assigned a court appointed lawyer, Donna Newman, who briefly met with him and planned to file several motions to compel the government to show cause for his arrest. On June 8, 2002, 3 days before the court was to hear the motions, Jose Padilla was declared an enemy combatant by the president, placed under military control and transferred to a military brig in South Carolina.
             This action effectively removed him from the criminal justice system and the protections of the constitution. He has been held in solitary confinement without any formal charges and has been denied access to his attorney. The last time she saw him was on June 7, 2002.
             I do not propose by any means that Mr. Padilla is an innocent victim of the government's war on terror nor do I propose that he is a terrorist, but simply that as an American citizen he cannot be held indefinitely without any formal charges or right to counsel based on an executive order. The President lacks the authority to lock someone away; to determine who gets imprisoned is through the due process of a trial by jury. The dilemma is how to reconcile the values of the Constitution and the safety of the people? .
             The Founding Fathers when drafting the Constitution were trying to ensure the protections of the people from a tyrannical government that sought to impose its will on the people without question. They had escaped the persecutions of the English King and sought to protect the citizens of the United States with rights that were guaranteed under the constitution designed to limit the powers of the government to arrest and hold people at will without judicial review.


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