been misusing its power to seek material witness detentions

Administration Abuses Material Witness Law
By TChris, Section War on Terror
Posted on Mon Jun 27, 2005 at 07:05:55 AM EST
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by TChris

Bump and Update: The report is here. The ACLU's statement is here.
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The Bush administration used "material witness" warrants to detain at least 70 individuals suspected of terrorism, a statistic leading two groups to conclude that the administration has been misusing its power to seek material witness detentions.

Only 28 of the suspects were eventually charged with a crime, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch, and most of those charges were not related to terrorism. ... At least 30 detainees were never called to testify before a court or grand jury, the advocacy groups said in a report [to be released Monday]. All but one of those detained are Muslim, they said.

The most publicized abuse was the detention of Brandon Mayfield, but the report accuses the administration of twisting the material witness law "beyond recognition."


Twenty-three people were held two months or more without being charged, the report said. "They threw witnesses in a black hole where they didn't have access to the basis for their arrest, weren't provided with lawyers, weren't allowed to talk to family members and were held in complete secrecy with no concrete end to their detention," said Anjana Malhotra, the report's author.

Sen. Pat Leahy may introduce legislation to reign in the administration's abuse of the law.

"I am troubled by reports that this narrow law has been twisted from one of a specific statute to secure testimony, into a broad detention authority that has resulted in some notorious abuses," Leahy said.