Lefties Are OK With Indefinite Detention When It's For Their Crimes

This is an amazing(ly depressing) story. I thought indefinite detention was a bad thing. That's what liberals told me when we detained people who wanted to kill us in what they perceive as a war for domination. Pikers. Alas, there is no sin like environmental sin and no usurpation of liberty is too great for that. (Note: from paid site)

A US judge has forced local authorities to negotiate with Evalend Shipping after the ‘indefinite detention of crew’ in an investigation of magic-pipe allegations.

US authorities are treating seafarers “like enemy combatants”, says a US federal judge in Houston, who has strongly criticised the indefinite detention of crew members in pollution investigations.

Judge Vanessa Gilmore of the Southern District of Texas (SDTX) federal court has taken the unusual step of putting court pressure on the the US Coast Guard (USCG) and Department of Justice (DoJ) in their negotiations with owner and crew in a pollution investigation.

In the midst of an investigation of magic-pipe allegations involving Greece’s Evalend Shipping and the 15-man crew of its 5,700-dwt products tanker Mediator (built 2008), Gilmore has forced the USCG and DoJ authorities to negotiate with defence lawyers and reduce bonds and limit terms of confinement under a “security agreement” with the USCG.

In a set of personal and, at times, colourful remarks from the bench, the judge repeatedly made it clear that she is concerned about her country’s respect for seafarers’ civil rights.

According to a 52-page transcript of a 5 January hearing in the ongoing case, Gilmore told prosecutors and lawyers for the owner: “That is the thing that is really the most troubling to me of this entire deal, not the money so much, but just the indefinite detention of people, just saying, ‘You’re stuck here and we don’t have to tell you anything. You’re like enemy combatants. We don’t have to tell you when you’re going to get let go.’”

Simply lawless.