http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/politics/19witness.html?hp
Material Witness Chart
Gotta keep them turrists under lock and key. And, be sure to keep them naked. Never know what harm they might with their WMD (Wardrobe of Mass Destruction)
LAS VEGAS - Abdullah al Kidd was on his way to Saudi Arabia to work on his doctorate in Islamic studies in March 2003 when he was arrested as a material witness in a terrorism investigation. An F.B.I. agent marched him across Dulles Airport in Washington in handcuffs.
"It was the most horrible, disgraceful, degrading moment in my life," said Mr. Kidd, an American citizen who was known as Lavoni T. Kidd when he led his college football team, the Vandals of the University of Idaho, in rushing in 1995.
The two weeks that followed his arrest, he said, were a terrifying and humiliating ordeal.
"I was made to sit in a small cell for hours and hours and hours buck naked," he said. "I was treated worse than murderers."
After that, a federal judge ordered him to move in with his in-laws in Las Vegas, where his wife was planning to stay until she joined him in Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Kidd, who described himself as "anti-bin Laden, anti-Taliban, anti-suicide bombing, anti-terrorism," was never charged with a crime and never asked to testify as a witness. In June, 16 months after his arrest, the court said he was free to resume his life.
But at the kitchen table of his dumpy little bachelor flat here, with a television on the floor and incense in the air, Mr. Kidd said the experience had cost him dearly. He lost his scholarship, he now moves furniture for a living, and his marriage has fallen apart. About 60 other men have been held in terrorism investigations under the federal material witness law since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a coming report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. Such laws, meant to ensure that people with important information do not disappear before testifying, have been used to hold people briefly since the early days of the republic.
But scholars and critics say the government has radically reinterpreted what it means to be a material witness in recent years. These days, people held as material witnesses in terrorism investigations are often not called to testify against others; instead, frequently they are charged with crimes themselves. They lack constitutional protections like the requirement that criminal suspects in custody be informed of their Miranda rights. Moreover, they are often held for long periods in the same harsh conditions as those suspected of very serious crimes.
Mary Jo White, who supervised several major terrorism investigations as the United States attorney in Manhattan until she resigned in 2002, said the frequent and aggressive use of the material witness law in terrorism investigations was a recent development.
"It was really my idea to use the material witness warrant statute in appropriate cases to detain for reasonable periods of time people who might not appear for a grand jury with information related to the 9/11 attacks," she said. The law is, she said, an important tool, but one that must be used judiciously.
"Some of the criticism that has been leveled at it is not wholly unjustified," said Ms. White, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993. "Was enough done to clear the status of the person? Did you hold the person longer than you needed to? Does it really sort out to being in one sense preventive detention? Yes, it does, but with safeguards."
Ronald L. Carlson, a law professor at the University of Georgia and an expert on the material witness law, said Ms. White's account understates the magnitude of the change.
"The law was designed to hold Mr. A, the material witness, to testify about a crime committed by Mr. B, the suspect," he said. "Now they are locking up Mr. A as a material witness to the crime of Mr. A. The notion is, 'We'll hold him until we develop probable cause to arrest him for a crime.' "
A senior Justice Department official who declined to be quoted by name, citing the sensitivity of terrorism investigations, dismissed that analysis. "You would be really hard pressed," he said, "if you were able to lift the veil of secrecy on this - and you can't - to find that we've used a material witness warrant to get a solo actor for something he's done on his own."
The official acknowledged, though, that witnesses are frequently charged with crimes.
"If someone has material information who will not come testify, it tends not to be a nun who walks out of a monastery who happens to see a crime from afar," he said.
Defense lawyers said that many people willing to testify voluntarily have nonetheless been detained.
Continued
Material Witness Chart
Gotta keep them turrists under lock and key. And, be sure to keep them naked. Never know what harm they might with their WMD (Wardrobe of Mass Destruction)
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