Bush administration wants U.S. citizen tried in Iraqi court.

The Bush administration insists that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction to deal with the case of Jordanian-born U.S. citizen Shawqi Omar, a former Minnesota National Guardsman imprisoned in Iraq on charges of harboring insurgents and abetting terrorism.

Shawqi Omar is described by the Bush administration as being a relative and would-be accomplice of deceased terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Because he is held in Iraq under the custody of a UN-authorized multinational coalition--where he is forbidden to speak with an attorney--U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over him, and he can be transferred to the custody of an Iraqi court.

This would almost certainly mean the accused would be tortured and run through a trial conducted under a bizarre amalgam of Islamic and "international" law--meaning that he would have none of the due process protections and immunities to which those tried before U.S. courts are entitled. It would also create a precedent that could be used against other U.S. citizens in the future--a possibility of which a federal appeals court was very aware.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has pointed out that "the government's theory might allow the military to arrest someone inside the United States and hold him without due process--all under the guise of a multinational force," observed an AP account.

Although Deputy Solicitor General Gregory Garre insisted that this would never happen, the judges pointed out that it could. They also expressed amazement at the administration's claim that "courts had no jurisdiction over a U.S. citizen being held by his country's military."

An interesting and largely unremarked aspect of this case, as with the practice of "extraordinary rendition" and the proposed special military tribunals permitting the use of hearsay evidence, secret evidence, and testimony obtained through torture, is that this practice would move our justice system much closer to the standards and practices of UN tribunals. This despite the fact that the Bush administration, supposedly a bane enemy of the world body, has been opposed to the UN's International Criminal Court. The ruling on this case is not expected until sometime next year.