Pete Sessions: “We held German prisoners in the northern campus of the University of Alabama where I lived when I was in law school.…”

“We held German prisoners in the northern campus of the University of Alabama where I lived when I was in law school. They had German prisoners there during World War II. But what I want to try to reassure my colleague about is that we do have a proper procedure that is ongoing. For example, we have defined these as combatants. We give them a combatant status review tribunal when they come in. They are reviewed in that fashion. They have a three-judge panel. They actually go beyond the requirements that the U.S. Supreme Court said in the Hamdi case. In addition to that, they created an Administrative Review Board that, on an annual basis, must make an assessment of whether there is continued reason to believe that the enemy combatant poses a threat to the United States or its allies, or whether there are other factors bearing upon the need for the kind of detention, including its enemy combatant intelligence value in the gulf war on terrorism. For example, in the first year of those Administrative Review Board hearings, there were 330 decisions to continue to detain the prisoners, 119 decisions to transfer them to other jurisdictions, other countries perhaps, or possibly other countries, and 14 release decisions. This second year, to date, the review board had 12 findings of continued to detain, 6 transfers, and no release decisions. At least there is a procedure.…”