Court refuses to consider rendition case

The US Supreme Court
© AFP/Getty Images/File Brendan Hoffman

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal Monday by five former detainees claiming a flight-planning firm had helped arrange for the CIA to send them to countries where they were tortured.

The men -- an Egyptian, an Italian, a Yememi, an Iraqi and an Ethiopian -- first filed suit in May 2007 against a Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan.

They said they had been tortured at secret prisons abroad, especially in Morocco and Egypt, as terror suspects under the Central Intelligence Agency's post-September 11 rendition program.

In September, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed the case, agreeing with President Barack Obama's administration that trying it could threaten "state secrets" and compromise national security.

"With today's decision, the Supreme Court has refused once again to give justice to torture victims and to restore our nation's reputation as a guardian of human rights and the rule of law," said ACLU National Security Project litigation director Ben Wizner, who argued the case before the appeals court.

ACLU legal director Steven Shapiro said the ruling "will not end the debate over the government's use of the 'state secrets' privilege to avoid judicial scrutiny for illegal actions carried out in the name of fighting terrorism."

"In a nation committed to the rule of law, unlawful activity should be exposed, not hidden behind a 'state secrets' designation," he added.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license 

Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

George W. Bush: Torturer-in-Chief

Dees Illustration

David Cole
The Nation

In an uncoerced confession in his new memoir, Decision Points, former President George W. Bush proudly admits that he personally signed off on the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in 2003. Former Vice President Dick Cheney made the same admission in a televised interview shortly before he left office. In one sense, this is nothing new. It had long been reported that the CIA's use of what the Bush administration euphemistically called "enhanced interrogation techniques" had been approved at the highest levels of the administration. But now both Bush and Cheney have publicly admitted to specifically signing off on the CIA's torture tactics. Their direct personal admissions now seal the case against them.

What case, you might ask? There is in fact no criminal or civil case against the former president or vice president for these actions. And both men no doubt felt comfortable admitting they had authorized what the world recognizes as torture because they believe they are politically immune from being held accountable. Even before the midterm elections, Barack Obama had insisted that he wanted only to look forward, not backward. With a strengthened Republican Party after the elections, it is even less likely that Bush or Cheney will be held accountable by the Obama administration. On November 9 the Justice Department announced that no criminal charges would be brought against the CIA agents who destroyed videotapes of the torture interrogations; that part of the cover-up, it seems, has succeeded.

But Bush and Cheney are not immune. In fact, the United States is legally obligated by the Convention Against Torture, a treaty we helped draft, and have signed and ratified, to investigate any credible allegations of torture by a person within US jurisdiction. And if the United States does not take action, other nations are authorized to do so, under the principle of "universal jurisdiction," which treats torture as so heinous that its perpetrators can be investigated and prosecuted by any country if their own country fails to take corrective action.

Chile's former President Augusto Pinochet found this out the hard way. After flying to London for medical treatment, he was served with an arrest warrant issued by a Spanish magistrate investigating him for, among other things, authorizing torture. Pinochet argued that he was immune from such action as a former head of state, but Britain's highest court rejected that plea, and Pinochet was placed under arrest. He was eventually sent back to Chile on medical grounds, but he spent the last years of his life there fighting criminal charges arising out of his acts as president.

Investigating and arresting the former president of Chile is one thing. Investigating and arresting the former president and vice president of the United States would be another matter altogether. No doubt Bush was relying on just that calculation in admitting his guilt in his memoir. And it may be that Bush and Cheney are deliberately admitting their crime at a time when they know they will not be prosecuted, in hopes of putting the issue behind them and providing cover to those below them who also approved of the crime. How can we prosecute anyone lower down when the president and vice president have admitted to giving their approval?

Read Full Article

Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!

Print this page

No charges to be filed in destruction of CIA tapes

Image Source / Raw Story

David Edwards
Raw Story

There will be no criminal charges over the destruction of CIA tapes showing interrogation of terrorism detainees, according to a new report.

Federal prosecutors have determined that there is not enough evidence to bring charges, two sources have told NPR.

The statue of limitations expired Monday so no future prosecutions will be possible.

A few of the tapes allegedly contained evidence showing the interrogation of two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Intelligence officials told NBC News that one of the tapes showed Zubaydah being waterboarded. Other tapes contained innocuous images of other detainees.

Read Full Article

RELATED ARTICLES:
America's Torture Doctrine
Another Nuremberg in the Making: Intelligence Agencies Employ Physicians to Torture Detainees

Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!

Print this page

Torture Orders Were Part of U.S. Sectarian War Strategy

Gareth Porter
IPS

WASHINGTON - The revelation by Wikileaks of a U.S. military order directing U.S. forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis has been treated in news reports as yet another case of lack of concern by the U.S. military about detainee abuse.

But the deeper significance of the order, which has been missed by the news media, is that it was part of a larger U.S. strategy of exploiting Shi'a sectarian hatred against Sunnis to help suppress the Sunni insurgency when Sunnis had rejected the U.S. war.

And Gen. David Petraeus was a key figure in developing the strategy of using Shi'a and Kurdish forces to suppress Sunnis in 2004-2005.

The strategy involved the deliberate deployment of Shi'a and Kurdish police commandoes in areas of Sunni insurgency in the full knowledge that they were torturing Sunni detainees, as the reports released by Wikileaks show.

Read Full Article

RELATED ARTICLES:
America's Torture Doctrine
Another Nuremberg in the Making: Intelligence Agencies Employ Physicians to Torture Detainees

Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!

Print this page

Who's to blame for torture? Lawyers probe Wikileaks logs

Paisley Dodds and Raphael G. Satter
Associated Press

LONDON — It has been one of the most bitter legal debates during the so-called war on terror – who's to blame for torture and how many degrees of separation does it take to dodge a lawsuit?

Lawyers say the answer may lie in recently leaked documents, which human rights groups and some Iraqi civilians hope will be a treasure trove of evidence that could prove U.S. and other coalition forces broke a cardinal rule of international law – handing over terror suspects when they had good reason to believe the detainees would be tortured.

The Pentagon has criticized the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks for publishing nearly 400,000 U.S. military logs detailing daily carnage in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. In July, the same group published 77,000 secret documents on the war in Afghanistan.
The classified logs on Iraq describe detainees abused by Iraqi forces, insurgent bombings, sectarian executions and civilians shot at checkpoints by U.S. troops. They also chart how coalition troops handed Iraqis back to security forces after suspicions that the Iraqis were abusing or torturing detainees.

Lawyers say the once-secret logs are different from other leaks because of the vast amount of material presented and the number of potential breaches of international law.

"If a state knows that there's a real risk that a person will be tortured by another state, they simply cannot transfer that person to the other country's custody," said Phil Shiner of U.K.-based Public Interest Lawyers, which represents some 130 Iraqi civilians who allege ill-treatment by Britain's armed forces.

But not everyone agrees that torture is avoidable during war, let alone just how far an occupying power should go to make sure terror suspects aren't tortured and abused – especially in the case of Iraq, which is a sovereign state.

Read Full Article

RELATED ARTICLES:
America's Torture Doctrine
Another Nuremberg in the Making



Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!

Print this page

UN calls for probe into US inaction on torture

Fragmentary order 242' allowed US forces to ignore torture allegations: report

Daniel Tencer -- Raw Story

The United Nations' point man on torture is calling on the Obama administration to open a full investigation into newly-released documents that suggest the US may have turned a blind eye to torture in Iraq.

Manfred Nowak, the UN's special rapporteur on torture, told the BBC Saturday that the US has an "obligation" to look into reports of torture within the nearly 400,000 war documents released by WikiLeaks on Friday.

The documents chronicle numerous allegations of torture by Iraqi forces against their own citizens, as well as what appears to have been a standing order in the US military to ignore the allegations -- potentially a violation of international conventions on torture.

"There is an obligation to investigate whenever there are credible allegations torture has happened – and these allegations are more than credible – and then it is up to the courts," Nowak, an Austrian human rights lawyer, said, as quoted at the Telegraph.

Read Full Article:

RELATED ARTICLES:
America's Torture Doctrine
Another Nuremberg in the Making: Intelligence Agencies Employ Physicians to Torture Detainees

Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!

Print this page

Iran needs stern lessons in freedom

Glenn Greenwald
Salon

Here is the latest Outrage of Evil from the Persian Hitlers:

Iran's intelligence minister confirmed on Wednesday that two U.S. citizens detained for more than a year will face trial, news reports said.

"The two Americans will be tried," Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency. "We will hand any evidence we have to the judiciary."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on Tuesday that she had heard Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal would be tried on November 6 but she still hoped they would be released.

It's high time that we teach those Iranians about democracy and freedom.  All civilized people know that this is how a Free and Democratic Nation treats foreign detainees:

The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.

Read Full Article

RELATED ARTICLES:
Hey Hillary, Which 'Intolerant Governments' Are You Referring to?
Is Iran Playing Geopolitical Chess with 9-11, and Winning?

Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!

Print this page

Wolfowitz Directive Gave Legal Cover to Detainee Experimentation Program

Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye
TruthOut

In 2002, as the Bush administration was turning to torture and other brutal techniques for interrogating "war on terror" detainees, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz loosened rules against human experimentation, an apparent recognition of legal problems regarding the novel strategies for extracting and evaluating information from the prisoners.

Wolfowitz issued his directive on March 25, 2002, about a month after President George W. Bush stripped the detainees of traditional prisoner-of-war protections under the Geneva Conventions. Bush labeled them "unlawful enemy combatants" and authorized the CIA and the Department of Defense (DoD) to undertake brutal interrogations.

Despite its title - "Protection of Human Subjects and Adherence to Ethical Standards in DoD-Supported Research" - the Wolfowitz directive weakened protections that had been in place for decades by limiting the safeguards to "prisoners of war."

"We're dealing with a special breed of person here," Wolfowitz said about the war on terror detainees only four days before signing the new directive.

Read Full Article

RELATED ARTICLE:

Another Nuremberg in the Making: Intelligence Agencies Employ Physicians to Torture Detainees

Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!

Print this page