Minneapolis, MN – More than 50 people jointed a Dec. 23 picket line here, at the Obama campaign headquarters, to demand the President veto the National Defense Authorization act, which contains provisions that allow indefinite detention without trial. The protest was organized by Occupy Minneapolis and local anti-war groups.

Critics of these provisions, which President Obama is expected to sign on Dec. 26, say the bill is a real threat to civil liberties and human rights. Several provisions in the NDAA give congressional authorization of indefinite military detentions without trial for people accused by the government of being terrorists. It codifies the powers claimed by both George Bush and Barack Obama based on the “2001 Authorization to Use Military Force” to declare people enemy combatants, indefinitely detain them without trial, gut habeas corpus and carry out assassinations.

Sam Richards of Occupy Minneapolis said, “The NDAA of 2012 is the largest assault on our rights since the Patriot Act. Obama ran as a champion of civil liberties, we are going to urge him to veto NDAA and protect our right to habeas corpus, among other things.”

Jess Sundin of the Anti-War Committee and Committee to Stop FBI Repression said, “We are protesting this effort by Congress to give the president the right to lock American citizens up indefinitely without trial. It's a way of declaring people enemy combatants. We in the anti-war movement know firsthand how the government feels about those who disagree with them. This would give the government permission to not only investigate me for ‘supporting terrorism’ because of my activism, but to detain me based of accusation alone, lock me up and throw away the key. President Obama needs to do the right thing and veto this now.”

Sundin was one of the activists raided by the FBI last year and summoned to a Chicago Grand Jury investigating ‘material support for terrorism.’

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