Washington, DC – President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA), which includes provisions that allow for indefinite military detention without trial, on Dec.31. The timing of signing assured limited coverage by the corporate media.

Civil liberties organizations, including the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, had urged Obama to veto the NDAA.

A statement from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression noted, “We need to do everything in our power to push back against repression. Under the guise of preventing ‘terrorism’ our democratic rights are being taken away. We have seen this in the case of the 24 anti-war and international solidarity activists who were raided by the FBI and/or called to the grand jury investigating ‘material support for Foreign Terrorist Organizations.’ We have seen this in the prosecution of veteran Chicano activist Carlos Montes in Los Angeles.”

The NDAA, like laws that pertain to the ‘material support for terrorism’ are anti-democratic.

A statement from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) points out, “Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again. The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA.”

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