The following essay will attempt to answer how the act of terrorism can be dealt without undermining the very foundations of democracy. Obama Administration softer stance on counterterrorism measure will cause the shift of recognition of terrorists in the process of civilian trial instead of unlawful combatant. This essay will highlight the case of Times Square Bombing Attempt. The FBI warned the terror suspect of explosion attempt in Times Square (01/05) area of New York City, USA of his rights to remain silent. With minimum consistent policy on terrorism detainees and owing to the notion that America advocates and promotes should they have a set aside the “legal niceties” over “public safety” ?
In the early May 2010, citizens of New York were appalled to the fact that an attempt of terrorist attack was about to burst in the neighborhood. The attack is well planned but not well executed. Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani American was then captured and being interrogated without being read a Miranda warning, whereas he is a naturalized US citizen. Had or had not the NYPD detectives informed the warning, Shahzad has nonetheless revealed his plot and of his recent trip to Peshawar-Pakistan, which is famous as a jumping off point for al Qaeda and Taliban. He told how during his 5 months of stay, he received a special training from Pakistani militants to conduct the attack. Prior to this incident, a Nigerian terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab whom during the Christmas afternoon of 2009, was also fail to resort his “underwear explosives” in a Delta airplane to Detroit. When the police found his whereabouts and proceed to interrogation, the police resort to the permit of responding towards immediate threat and undermine Miranda warning in the epilogue of the interrogation, but later utilized the warning in the subsequent 30 minutes.
In a greater sphere of value: How best Should U.S treat a terrorist detainee?. The U.S apparently has minimum consistent policy of whether to recognize a terrorist as civilian or combatant . The nature of the prescribed situation show that lately, terrorist are trying to probably shift its strategies where attacks are not done in a big concert of action, but individual and small scale and modest operation to create fear. This has prompted Obama’s administration to review the relevance of reading Miranda warning in the case of interrogating terrorists, contended that in the case of terrorism, Miranda rights is obsolete during capture and investigation for the purpose of intelligence and fact finding. Miranda warning is a rights which allow a captured criminals or suspects, about his rights to remain silent or else his statement will be used against him/her during trial. The warning’s genesis lies in the Fifth Amendment, which says that the government may not compel a person “in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” The framers knew how easy it was to obtain a confession through torture or other forms of overt coercion, and how tempting it was for a government to use such tactics. To prohibit this kind of abuse, the founders said, in effect, that a person could not be forced to confess .
Public and elites are dissenting on the question of whether alleged terrorist should be read a Miranda warning or not. Senator McCain and his supporters resort to the Bill of Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention,and Prosecution act of 2010, to deny Miranda warning for suspects . Proponents to this camp argue that under the interest of “public safety”, immediate threats must be responded with immediate action too. The key to fight this unanticipated threat of individual and small scale attack is to also curtail information so we can break the network down and try to trace the accomplishes . McCain:s proposal for the bill is a response toward American weaker measurement to fight terrorism, as alleged that Obama is considering to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ali al-Marri, the 9/11 planner from Guantanamo to a civilian court in New York . So his political opponents is beginning to see the light of Obama’s leniency from American radical view upon terrorist attacks and its networking.
Analysis: Compatibility of action and values
In a democratic country like United States, the means to resort justice must also consistent to the guidance of principal of law and democracy per se. Indeed, democracies oftentimes face acute dilemmas when confronting acts of violence which fall under the rubric of terrorism. Overreaction can alienate the population and even damaging government legitimacy more than action of small terrorist groups. National counter-terrorism measures will typically fall into two distinct areas: the criminal justice model (in which terrorism is viewed as a crime, with responsibility for response falling within the bounds of the state’s criminal legal system); and the military model, which takes terrorism as an act of revolutionary warfare with the response to place terrorists as equal to combatant and therefore entailing the use of retaliatory strikes and troop deployment . The event of 9/11 signified a new level of prominence for global prevention of terrorism, it is a vital debate and open forum to promote consideration of both patterns of violence and the responses being played out. Under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, USA recognized terrorist organizations such as Taliban and al-Qaeda and upgraded its status as an unlawful enemy combatant. So under this act, USA will treat terrorists as combatants, unlawful one. This special act has undermined the rights of the suspects of attorney and definitely Miranda Warning, and will cause them a process of non-civilian trial.
Within these dichotomies, US is still between the two strains of treating terrorists as combatants or civilian. In the case of Times Square bombing, the perpetrators is a naturalized U.S citizen, but the fact that makes him identity affiliated to Al Qaeda would shift the method that is taken by the authority. This is apparent as Eric Holder himself named the charge against Shahzad as terrorism transcending borders instead of insurgency. As a matter of fact, reading of Miranda Rights is a custom that is even still practiced at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. This action is preserved in order to preserve the quality of evidence obtained .
Secondly, the failure to give a Miranda warning does not result in a case being dismissed. It only results in the inability of the police to ideally use a confession and its fruits in evidence. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of successful criminal prosecutions. Yet the action to outstrip Miranda warning had the precedence where in 1984 ,a police officer asked a suspect, at the time of his arrest and before reading him his rights, about where he had hidden a gun. The court deemed the defendant’s answer and the gun admissible as evidence against him . Had the police told about Miranda warning, the suspect would probably aware of the situation and his rights and do not want to cooperate with information sharing during interrogation. Public safety exception should be enlarged to allow law enforcement to interrogate without Mirandizing, until law enforcement is satisfied that vital intelligence related to other possible plots and threats to public safety has sufficiently acquired. So on the level of the urgency to curtail information, flexibility of Miranda warning might still apply.
Conclusion
To effectively undercut the basis of support for terrorist activity, any liberal democratic response must rest on one overriding principle: a commitment to uphold and maintain constitutional system of legal authority. In instances where the state fails to abide by this fundamental dictum, counter terrorist response run the very grave task of posing even more of danger to underling liberal and democratic norms and institutions extreme political violence
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