Interfaith Intervention: Group Voices Support For Dodd's Bill Restoring Rights To Detainees

By Elizabeth Hamilton - Hartford Courant
Monday, April 09, 2007 - Web Link
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April 6, 2007

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is not particularly popular with the clergy crowd these days.

At least not with the specific clergy who gathered Thursday at Hartford Seminary to voice support for a bill sponsored by Lieberman's counterpart in the U.S. Senate, Christopher J. Dodd.

Dodd's bill, the "Restoring the Constitution Act," would roll back many components of last year's Military Commissions Act, which gave the government the right to hold unlawful enemy combatants in prison indefinitely without formally charging them with a crime.

It also gave the president the authority to determine which "aggressive interrogation techniques" constitute torture and which do not, rather than following the standards set by the Geneva Conventions.

Dodd's bill would undo all of that. Many leaders from Connecticut's Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Islamic faiths support the bill and have been asking the rest of the state's congressional delegation to support it, as well.

Most of the legislators have given their support, except Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4th District, and Lieberman.

"We learned from Sen. Lieberman's office just yesterday that he is not yet ready to decide whether he will be supporting the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007," the Rev. Allie Perry, who sits on the board of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, told the crowd gathered Thursday.

People in the audience grumbled.

"I have to say I am baffled by what it is that Sen. Lieberman needs in order to become ready to decide," Perry said. "Perhaps Sen. Lieberman needs to know that we not only expect, but we demand ... that he will join his Democratic congressional colleagues in Connecticut and exhibit moral leadership."

Rob Sawicki, Lieberman's press secretary, said Thursday that Lieberman "considers Sen. Dodd's bill to be one of the many ways forward on this issue, and he is waiting for the committee process to be completed before making a final decision on which approach is the most appropriate."

Lieberman voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006 while running for re-election as an independent candidate. He lost the Democratic primary last August to Ned Lamont - primarily because of his support of the Iraq War - but won the general election in November.

Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice, an interfaith network of religious leaders and people of faith, organized Thursday's press conference, which was intentionally timed to coincide with Holy Week.

The participants - including Auxiliary Bishop Peter Rosazza from the Archdiocese of Hartford; Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America; and Rabbi Herbert Brockman of Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden - spoke passionately at times about why they oppose the use of torture and secret detentions,.

Mattson read a poem, "Waterboarding," that she wrote Wednesday, about a form of torture. The poem ends with the writer's 14-year-old daughter opening her e-mail, seeing pictures of people being tortured this way and being terrified, "her faith diminished."

"God can only be good/ if there is some good in us/ the faith of our children/ treads water/ waiting for the life-guard in us," Mattson concluded.

Brockman also told a personal story to make his point. His father, who fled Europe 80 years ago because Jews were being persecuted, came to America because "here there was a chance to experience freedom, the rule of law superceded the law of rulers, and justice was to be blind."

"I am here today sadly to uphold my father's pride in this nation," Brockman said. "Jewish tradition teaches that in the end, the one who is able to protest against the wrongdoing that is being done, either in his family, his city, his nation or the world, and doesn't do so, is held accountable for that wrong being done."

Contact Elizabeth Hamilton at ehamilton@courant.com.