[Marxism] (fwd) The persecution of Mohammed Jawad

[Les Schaffer]

[forwarded for Einde]



Aaron Aarons wrote:
>> Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:32:13 -0400
>> From: "Fred Feldman" <ffeldman at bellatlantic.net>
>>
>> Aaron Aarons wrote:
>> The question of whether Mohammed Jawad threw a grenade or not, and of
>> whether the chief prosecutor hid evidence to the contrary, should be
>> irrelevant. The real issue is that killing invading imperialist 
>> soldiers is
>> not a crime, but a legitimate act of resistance.
>>
>> Fred comments:
>> Is this a denunciation of this lawyer for thinking that it mattered to
>> reveal that the chief prosecutor in this case was suppressing legally
>> relevant evidence in a Guantanamo case? Should we oppose revealing 
>> the chief
>> prosecutor's action because resistance is justified?
>
> We shouldn't oppose revealing such hanky-panky by the chief prosecutor 
> but we -- I'm talking about we alleged anti-imperialists -- should 
> *never*, in doing so, give credence to the presupposition that, if the 
> defendant actually did what they accuse him of having done, he would 
> be guilty of a crime.
>
> Here's an analogy: A white mob attacks a black neighborhood, injuring 
> and killing black people. One of the attackers is killed and a black 
> man is arrested and charged with murder. Even if it could be shown 
> that the prosecution was using dubious evidence to try to convict that 
> particular man, wouldn't it be more to the point that, whether he did 
> it or not, no crime was committed by him?
>
However, admitting that the accused had actually killed the attacker
would not be a very helpful strategy in the court. Indeed it would
probably guarantee a conviction - in other words the accused would be
collaborating with his own judicial lynching.

Of course, whether he did it or not wouldn't have any effect on the
attitude of anti-racists whether on the jury or elsewhere, but there are
no anti-imperialists on the Guantanamo kangaroo "courts", so your
analogy is irrelevant.

There may be cases where the defendant is willing to risk the death
penalty to prove a political point - one thinks of the leaders of the
Irish Easter Rising in 1916 - but this is the exception. On the other
hand the defenmce of Sacco and Vanzetti didn't say it would have been
justified if they had committed the acts they were accused of, it argued
that they had been railroaded and pointed out every inconsistency in the
evidence and the behaviour of the cops, the prosecution and the courts.
This was the correct defence strategy.

To be quite frank your position smacks of ultra-leftist purism.

Einde O'Callaghan