‘People should not be tortured, abused or held indefinitely without charge, whether perceived guilty or innocent. Holding anyone without charge, citizen or non-citizen, is a violation of the United States Constitution and international law.Torture is immoral, ineffective and absolutely illegal under domestic and international law.

In 2002, the Center for Constitutional Rights initiated litigation challenging the U.S. government's detention practices. In June 28, 2004, CCR was victorious in Rasul v. Bush, when the Supreme Court ruled that the detainees at Guantánamo have access to U.S. Courts to challenge their detention.Yet, the Administration has not complied.

We demand that the Bush Administration immediately: 

·                     Make public all documentation of torture & abuse.

·                     Launch an independent investigation & hold those responsible accountable.

·                     Give all detainees a hearing in U.S. courts.

·                     Stop the practice of rendition: moving detainees abroad for torture.

No Torture: Close Guantanamo

and, as for David Hicks, Lex Lasry, QC, demolishes Phillip Ruddock’s latest pathetic excuses for the Australian government’s failure to secure & protect his legal & human rights in the past 5 years, in today’s Melbourne Age …..

‘On January 7, 2007, federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock mounted a defence of the Australian Government in the case of David Hicks. The defence, in The Sunday Age, fails. It fails as much for what it does not say as for what it does.

The credibility of the Australian Government is drained by the fact that it apparently never considered that the original military commission process might have been unfair. Hicks was left to the mercy of that process.

The primary point now made by the Attorney-General is that despite that oversight and assertions to the contrary, the Australian Government has not abandoned Hicks and, in fact, does care whether or not he gets a fair trial. Further, the Government is "deeply unhappy" about the time the process has taken. For more than three years this unhappiness has had absolutely no effect.’

Negligent Or Just Ineffective