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Following the Times Square bomb scare, the Obama administration announced on Sunday that it would work with Congress on legislating limitations of the constitutional rights granted to terrorism suspects. Attorney General Eric Holder hopes the changes would allow law enforcement a wider window of opportunity to question suspected terrorists before they are read their Miranda rights. Holder says they would ensure law enforcement agents the “necessary flexibility” to obtain information from terror suspects. The legislation would include American citizens in its reach. However, this is by no means the first time that citizens’ constitutional rights have been jeopardized in the name of national security. In a controversial case, Texas-born, Virginia-raised Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, an American student studying in Saudi Arabia, was arrested by Saudi authorities while taking his final exams in 2003. Although there were no charges filed against him, and although he was not given access to an attorney, he was held for nearly two years by the Saudi government. During this time, he was interrogated and tortured by a joint FBI-Saudi authority. A “confession” obtained after torture and under threat, was later used to sentence him for 30 years in the United States. That sentence was then increased to life in prison. Ahmed’s sister, Mariam Abu Ali, is a senior at Georgetown University, and recently wrote an article about her brother called, “My Brother Faces a Lifetime of Solitary Confinement on a Spurious Terror Conviction.”

GUEST: Mariam Abu Ali, senior at Georgetown University, sister of Ahmed Abu Ali

Read Mariam’s article here: http://www.alternet.org/story/146817/my_brother_faces_a_lifetime_of_
solitary_confinement_on_a_spurious_terror_conviction/

Find out more at www.freeahmed.com.