Friday 17th of May 2024
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remembering geneva .....

remembering geneva .....

‘The US war crimes tribunals at Guantanamo have betrayed the principles of fairness that made the Nazi war crimes trials at Nuremberg a judicial landmark, one of the US Nuremberg prosecutors said on Monday.

"I think Robert Jackson, who's the architect of Nuremberg, would turn over in his grave if he knew what was going on at Guantanamo," Nuremberg prosecutor Henry King Jr. told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"It violates the Nuremberg principles, what they're doing, as well as the spirit of the Geneva Conventions of 1949."’

"Nuremberg Prosecutor Says Trials At Guantanamo Make Mockery Of US Justice & Violate Geneva Conventions"

meanwhile, bushit copped it in the neck from the courts when, in a "major setback" to his terrorism detention policies, the Fourth Circuit Court in Richmond, VA, ruled that "the President cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention."

In a 2-1 decision, the court declared that Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari national who is the last person on the American mainland known to be held as an enemy combatant, must be released from military detention. The ruling barred military detention of any civilian captured inside the United States, though the decision is limited to those who are in the country legally and have established connections here. The al-Marri ruling is only the latest in a series of blows to the Bush administration's detainee policy. In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that the original military commissions set up by the administration "were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law."

Last week, two separate military judges ruled that the revised military commissions set up by the administration currently have no jurisdiction over any of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay because "there was a flaw in the procedure the military has used to file such charges against Guantanamo detainees." On Sunday, Gen. Colin Powell, Bush's first Secretary of State, publicly called for the closing of Guantanamo Bay and an end to the military commission system associated with it. As the New York Times writes today, this "ruling is another strong argument for bringing Mr. Bush's detention camps under the rule of law," which would entail repealing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, "closing Guantanamo Bay and...allowing the courts to sort out the prisoners...by the rules of justice that have guided this nation for more than 200 years."

But of course, none of this stops bushit & his ship of criminal fools from pursuing their gangsterism ….

‘The word came in May 2006: Ali Mohammed Nasser Mohammed, a slight, 24-year-old Yemeni with curly black hair and a wispy beard, would be freed from Guantanamo after more than four years. He got a checkup. His photo was taken, as were his fingerprints. He was measured for clothes and shoes, then offered a meeting with the Red Cross.

As the Pentagon tersely put it later in an e-mail to his attorneys: "Your client has been approved to leave Guantanamo."

"He never went home," said Martha Rayner, one of the lawyers.

In the legal netherworld that the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has represented since it was opened in 2002, Mohammed, once a cook for the Taliban in Afghanistan, remains stuck in a limbo of mistaken identities, bureaucratic inertia and official neglect. In the eyes of his lawyers, the young Yemeni's case is an indictment of a system, still cloaked in the strictest secrecy and largely beyond accountability, in which a man who faces no charge and no sentence remains deprived of the freedom he was granted more than a year ago.

"It's a lovely illustration of what happens when there's no oversight of the jailer," said a rueful Rayner.’

Yemeni Languishes At Guantanamo Long After US Approved Release

torture 101 .....

And, from Mark Fiore ....

Torture 101

blowback .....

‘In all these ways, but especially by wielding their chosen term "detainee," and by defining "detainees" as essentially without rights as Americans would understand them, the Bush administration has stripped the United States of its traditional standing as the foremost champion of human rights. It has relinquished its bona fides to express the kind of moral outrage that could indeed buttress international support and legal due process for Americans who have been illegally imprisoned. Even more surprising, when administration officials, including the President, denounce the Iranians, they are tin-eared.

The hypocrisy in their words just doesn't register. When George W. Bush shows his outrage at the imprisonment of Americans without cause, evidence, or due process, it's as if he has no sense that, in much of the rest of the world, these are exactly the charges that ring out against his own administration.

Essentially, a frantic, fear-filled, information-impoverished, but stubbornly defended policy has finally blown back on America's own citizens. This was something former Secretary of State Colin Powell – who last weekend called for the closing of Guantanamo – predicted in January 2002 might well happen to captive U.S. troops, if not citizens, if the United States refused to classify its detainees in the Global War on Terror as prisoners of war.

Whether or not President Bush hears the hypocrisy in his own pleas, the fact remains that his detainee policy has deprived the government of a means of defending its own citizens on the international stage. It has, in effect, amputated the very legs it would need to stand on to protest against the Iranian detentions.

Try as they might, Bush administration officials can only cry foul by calling attention to their own systematic violations of justice and the law. In their mouths, the appeal to fundamental rights rings hollow indeed, depriving Americans of the protections afforded by once-accepted standards of decency and justice. Here, as on so many other fronts, the President's fierce "national security" policy has created an ever more insecure future for this country.’

Bush Policy Detained In Iran

drip torture .....

Eight months after bushit signed a bill authorising the CIA to resume using “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorism suspects, the administration has been unable to agree on what constitutes 'humiliating and degrading treatment' of detainees.

Meanwhile, bushit’s nominee for CIA counsel, John Rizzo, who, as acting CIA counsel, approved the legality of the outhouse administration's harsh interrogation tactics & "extraordinary rendition” program, is expected to face "tough questioning" today in a Senate confirmation hearing.

the bleedin' obvious .....

Yesterday, the US Senate Intelligence Committee held a confirmation hearing for John Rizzo, bushit's nominee to become the CIA's general counsel. Rizzo has served as an acting general counsel "off and on for the past six years, serving without Senate confirmation."

During his tenure, the CIA has engaged in a wide variety of highly questionable & potentially illegal interrogation practices. In 2002, Rizzo approved a memo, drafted by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, that stretched the definition of torture in order to make such behavior permissible in the course of an interrogation. To qualify as torture, the Bybee memo concluded, physical pain must be "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked Rizzo at the hearing, "Do you think you should have objected at the time [to the Bybee definition of torture]?" Rizzo answered, "I honestly - I can't say I should have objected at the time," to which Wyden replied, "I think that's unfortunate because it seems to me that language on a very straightforward reading is over the line. And that's what I think all of us wanted to hear - is that you wish you had objected."

Also during the hearing, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) asked Rizzo "whether we've ever rendered detainees to countries which use torture." Rizzo said that "it's difficult to give a yes or no answer" in a public hearing & asked that he provide an answer in closed session. Levin noted that in Dec. 2005, bushit said that: "we do not render to countries that use torture."

Furthermore, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) "said she will have a difficult time approving Rizzo's nomination, if he was part of the legal foundation for the government's detention program" & added, "I believe one of the reasons we are so hated abroad is because we appear to be hypocrites. ... We say one thing and practice another."

the usual bushit .....

Defense lawyers preparing for the war crimes trial of a 21-year-old Guantánamo detainee have been ordered by a military judge not to tell their client - or anyone else - the identity of witnesses against him, newly released documents show. 

The case of the detainee, Omar Ahmed Khadr, is being closely watched because it may be the first Guantánamo prosecution to go to trial, perhaps as soon as May. 

Defense lawyers say military prosecutors have sought similar orders to keep the names of witnesses secret in other military commission cases, which have been a centerpiece of the Bush administration's policies for detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Some legal experts and defense lawyers said the judge's order, issued on Oct. 15 without public disclosure, underscored the gap between military commission procedures and traditional American rules that the accused has a right to a public trial and to confront the witnesses against him. 

Defense lawyers say the order would hamper their ability to build an adequate defense because they cannot ask their client or anyone else about prosecution witnesses, making it difficult to test the veracity of testimony. 

Witness Names To Be Withheld From Detainee 

meanwhile ….. 

Amman, Jordan - Over the past seven years, an imposing building on the outskirts of this city has served as a secret holding cell for the CIA. 

The building is the headquarters of the General Intelligence Department, Jordan's powerful spy and security agency.

Since 2000, at the CIA's behest, at least 12 non-Jordanian terrorism suspects have been detained and interrogated here, according to documents and former prisoners, human rights advocates, defense lawyers and former U.S. officials. 

In most of the cases, the spy center served as a covert way station for CIA prisoners captured in other countries. It was a place where they could be hidden after being arrested and kept for a few days or several months before being moved on to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or CIA prisons elsewhere in the world. 

Others were arrested while transiting through Jordan, including two detained during stopovers at Amman's international airport.

Another prisoner, a microbiology student captured in Pakistan in the weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has not been seen since he was flown to Amman on a CIA plane six years ago. 

The most recent case to come to light involved a Palestinian detainee, Marwan al-Jabour, who was transferred to Jordan last year from a CIA-run secret prison, then released several weeks later in the Gaza Strip. 

Jordan's Spy Agency: Holding Cell for the CIA