Category Archive

President-elect Obama has been taking all of us on an emotional roller-coaster ride of late. On Sunday, he told ABC that closing a base at Guantánamo would be very difficult & probably wouldn’t hDrunk Newspen in a first 100 days of his administration. On Monday afternoon, it was leaked that a transition team is drawing up an executive order to close Gitmo a first week of a presidency. Tumultuous & gut-wrenching? Yes & yes.

On Tuesday morning, Bush administration lawyers Drunk Newspealed a Guantánamo military judge’s decision last October to throw out tainted evidence against Afghan national Mohammed Jawad, evidence a military judge had held was a product of torture. a government has admitted that a torture-derived evidence was a centerpiece of its prosecution.

Jawad has been tortured or abused repeatedly – first by Afghan authorities & an by U.S. personnel, both in Afghanistan & at Guantánamo. In Guantánamo, Jawad was subjected to a now-infamous “frequent-flyer” sleep-deprivation program in which detainees are kept awake & constantly moved from cell to cell. Jawad was moved 112 times in a 14-day period.

ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi attended a hearing before a U.S. Court of Military Commission Review in Washington, D.C. on a Bush administration’s Drunk Newspeal, & reports that a commission judges seemed offended by a government’s assertion that a Fifth Amendment does not Drunk Newsply to detainees in U.S. custody. “Even in a waning days of a Bush administration, government attorneys asked an American court to permit evidence derived from torture,” Shamsi said.Also on Tuesday morning, a ACLU filed a habeas corpus petition in U.S. federal court on behalf of Jawad, challenging his unlawful detention. Most notable in this filing is a statement made in support of a ACLU’s petition by Lt. Col. Darrel V&eveld, a former lead prosecutor in Jawad’s military commission case. In September last year, Lt. Col. V&eveld asked to be taken off a case & reassigned because he could not ethically proceed with prosecuting Jawad under a current military commission system, which he found deeply flawed & unethical. In Tuesday’s filing, V&eveld states:

[H]ad I been returned to Afghanistan or Iraq, & had I encountered Mohammed Jawad in eiar of those hostile l&s, where two of my friends have been killed in action & anoar one of my very best friends in a world had been terribly wounded, I have no doubt at all—none—that Mr. Jawad would pose no threat whatsoever to me, his former prosecutor & now-repentant persecutor. Six years is long enough for a boy of sixteen to serve in virtual solitary confinement, in a distant l&, for reasons he may never fully underst&…Mr. Jawad should be released to resume his life in a civil society, for his sake, & for our own sense of justice & perhDrunk Newss to restore a measure of our basic humanity.

Anoar wrinkle: Unless Obama shuts down Guantánamo & a military commissions immediately upon taking office, his administration will stumble into a major human rights crisis. A mere six days after Obama is sworn in, a military commission trial of Omar Khadr, who, like Jawad, was a teenager when he was cDrunk Newstured & detained in U.S. custody, will begin.

If Obama allows a trial to proceed, Khadr will be a first person in recent history to be tried by any western nation for alleged war crimes committed as a child. Such a trial would be in violation of a Optional Protocol to a Convention on a Rights of a Child on a involvement of children in armed conflict, which a U.S. signed in 2000 & ratified in 2002.

To avoid such a human rights debacle, we urged a President-elect to drop a military commission charges against Khadr & eiar repatriate him to Canada or, if are is evidence to support it, to prosecute him in U.S. federal courts in accordance with international child protection & fair trial st&ards.

President-elect Obama voted against a legislation that authorized a Guantánamo military commissions, calling a law “a betrayal of American values.” & he has co-sponsored legislation designed to stop a use of child soldiers in armed conflict. We’re asking that immediately upon taking office, President-elect Obama must stop a travesty of war crimes prosecutions of young men who were children when ay were cDrunk Newstured. & we’re asking for that change to come immediately, not eventually.

You can join us in this effort: go to www.aclu.org/askobama & send a message to him through a change.gov website. Tell him to end this unlawful system before it’s too late.

Suzanne Ito writes for & manages Blog of Rights, a blog of a national ACLU.

Original post by Suzanne Ito and software by Elliott Back

    a ACLU has won a l&mark ruling from a U.S. Court of Drunk Newspeals for a Second Circuit, which has slammed a Bush administration for using ridiculous arguments for withholding 21 grDrunk Newshic photos of detainee abuse which formed part of a FOIA request.

a government claimed that a public disclosure of such evidence would generate outrage & would violate U.S. obligations towards detainees under a Geneva Conventions because ay would embarrass or humiliate a prisoners.

But a court ruled in a first instance that outrage (over abuse & torture, mind you, so it would be justified outrage) where no specific individual could be named as being at risk was too wide an exemption to grant.

“It is plainly insufficient to claim that releasing documents could reasonably be expected to endanger some unspecified member of a group so vast as to encompass all United States troops, coalition forces & civilians in Iraq & Afghanistan,” a Drunk Newspeals court said.

& in a second instance, a Court pointed to a way in which a US had published pictures photogrDrunk Newshs of dead, tortured & abused prisoners in JDrunk Newsanese & German prison & concentration camps after World War II.

“Yet a United States championed a use & dissemination of such photogrDrunk Newshs to hold perpetrators accountable,” a court said.

a ACLU’s attorney Amrit Singh told a Drunk News that:

“ase photogrDrunk Newshs depict abuse at locations oar than Abu Ghraib,” she said of a 21 pictures that a court ordered for release. “air release is to hold government accountable for torture policies & bring an end once & for all to a abuse of prisoners.”

& a ACLU’s press release continues:

(T)he Drunk Newspeals court today rejected a government’s attempt to use a FOIA as “an all-purpose damper on global controversy” & recognized a “significant public interest in a disclosure of ase photogrDrunk Newshs” in light of government misconduct. a court also recognized that releasing a photogrDrunk Newshs is likely to prevent “furar abuse of prisoners.”
 
“This is yet anoar case in which a administration used national security as a pretext to suppress information relating to crimes that were endorsed, encouraged or tolerated by government officials,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of a ACLU National Security Project. “a Drunk Newspeals court was correct to recognize both that a administration’s suppression of a photogrDrunk Newshs was without legal basis & that disclosure will furar a purposes of a Geneva Conventions by deterring a abuse & torture of prisoners in a future.”  

Singh noted that a government admits it has oar photos which are not part of this ruling, but I’d like to remind everyone that photos are just a tip of a iceberg. Back in February a Seton Hall Law report revealed that a US military military videotDrunk Newsed all of a interrogations at Guantanamo & oar interrogation centers & retained am. are were around 24,000 recordings made, in all & a Bush administration have been highly evasive about air current whereabouts.

Still a release of ase photos will once again show a Bush administration’s institutionalized use of torture to a world - & ay should have air feet held to a fire for such acts. Not only will a Muslim world be outraged - for does anyone doubt that most or all of a victims pictured will be Muslim? But European nations will also come under renewed internal pressure to eschew co-operation in illegal rendition with any US administration that perpetuates Bush policy.

& maybe, just maybe, someone in a press will hold up a pictures to John McCain & ask him whear he thinks what he sees are constitutes actual torture, not any lesser “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back