The Bill of Rights
Fourth Amendment - Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Patriot Act was extended for another year this week. Read this information about it from the ACLU:
Late last year, to avoid expiration on December 31, 2009, Congress extended the provisions through February 28, 2010. Despite bills pending in both the House and the Senate to amend the three expiring provisions and other sections of the Patriot Act, Congress decided instead to move ahead with a straightforward reauthorization.
Since the Patriot Act's passage in 2001, there have been several consecutive reports (including one released in January) from the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General that have outlined widespread and blatant abuse of the statute. FBI agents routinely claimed false terrorism emergencies to use "exigent letters," or emergency letters, in order to gain private records for investigations when no emergency existed. The FBI also regularly issued NSLs after the fact in an attempt to legitimize the use of exigent letters. Even after today's vote, there remain bills pending in both the House and Senate that were specifically introduced to narrow the scope of the NSL statute.
The U.S. has blocked the release of photos showing clear evidence that the United States is responsible for torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. We think someone with access to the photos should simply leak them on the web, saving tax payers a load of cash and letting people know just what it is our twin occupations are really about. We are calling on anyone who has access to the images to leak them and anyone else to copy this message and post it in order to increase the chance of it reaching anyone who might have access.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates won't allow new photographs showing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq being abused by Americans military personnel. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has taken the issue to court, and is suing for the release of 21 color photos under the Freedom of Information Act. Ultimately, this lawsuit will win, but why waste the taxpayer dollars to hide from tax payers what they're funding in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Federal courts already rejected the White House arguments that the photos must be kept from public view. In respponse to this, Congress - which is largely populated by people who supported both invasions, knowingly swallowing vast doses of false information as if it were fact - gave Gates new power to keep them private.
We know the U.S. military and its many contractors are involved in torture and humiliation of detainees, actions in violation of both U.S. and international law. Evidence has been published in the past and it was shrugged off under the "few bad apples" plea. We know this isn't the case and these new photos are yet still more tangible proof of that.
If you have access to these photos, release them. If you don't have access to these photos, please cut and paste this call anywhere you can and let's create a viral plea to someone with the power to be a whistle blower. Don't wait for the courts.
It's been about ten weeks since I fell and broke both wrists on August 18th. I am just now finally almost back to normal functioning. Whatever that means. While there has not been a whole lot going on in my visible outer world, there's a lot going on in my own little mind. Still churning and brewing.
Meanwhile. August on, it's been Health Care Insurance Not Reform farce and the rise of Grayson and lots of other fun stuff.
Guess what has been churning and brewing behind the MSM radar scenes in torture/justice news? I don't know, somehow I quit paying attention. Thank goodness, the usual suspects did not.
The men in this video were held at Guantanamo for years without charge and denied any meaningful opportunity to challenge the legality of their detention. But now they are finally free. This is their story.
(ACLU adds this note: "Please note that by playing this clip You Tube and Google will place a long-term cookie on your computer. Please see You Tube's privacy statement on their website and Google's privacy statement on theirs to learn more. To view the ACLU's privacy statement, click here."
Sometimes people can be too smart for their own good.
According to recent news stories (see Spencer Ackerman's article in the Washington Independent), the Obama administration task force on interrogations is likely to recommend "small, mixed-agency teams for interviewing the most important terrorist targets." Moreover, according to former Deputy Attorney General and Intelligence Science Board member Philip Heymann:
... interrogators from across the military, CIA, and FBI, would be charged with creating a "syllabus" of best interrogation practices that fall within the boundaries of the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogations, which complies with the Geneva Conventions.
The Central Intelligence Agency crucified a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to a report published in The New Yorker magazine.
"A forensic examiner found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs," the magazine's Jane Mayer writes in the magazine's June 22nd issue. "Military pathologists classified the case a homicide." The date of the murder was not given.
"No criminal charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A. officer involved in the torture program, despite the fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by agency personnel died as a result of mistreatment," Mayer notes.
An earlier report, by John Hendren in The Los Angeles Times indicted other torture killings. And Human Rights First says nearly 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Medical reports corroborated the detainee's account, stating that the detainee had a broken nose, fractured leg, and scars on his stomach. In addition, soldiers confirmed that Task Force 20 interrogators wearing civilian clothing had interrogated the detainee. However, after initially reporting the abuse, the detainee said that he was forced by an American soldier to sign a statement denouncing the claims or else be kept in detention indefinitely. He agreed.
An investigator who reviewed the signed statement concluded that "[t]his statement, alone, is a prima facie indication of threats." However, despite the medical report and testimony from other soldiers, the criminal file was ultimately closed on the grounds that the investigation had "failed to prove or disprove" the offenses.
June 25 is Torture Accountability Day. At the close of this diary, you will learn how you can submit evidence of torture to the Department of Justice. You will also learn how you can help initiate a California State Bar investigation of Donald Rumsfeld's torture lawyer, William Haynes.
In today's TNR, we will cover breaking news on a Guantanamo detainee release, and ongoing revelations about the mysterious death of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi in a Libyan jail, a story first announced in the U.S. by Daily Kos Torture News Roundup on May 10, following a report by UK journalist Andy Worthington. Meanwhile, the long-awaited release of the CIA's Inspector General report on torture was delayed another week. Other revelations this past week include new information about a leading psychologist working for both the CIA and the Mitchell-Jessen torture firm; a British policy of covering up U.S. torture; ongoing political shenanigans over releasing hundreds of torture photos; human rights reports on torture centers in Zimbabwe; and more.
Is this Global War on Terror going to last forever? Has it already changed our nation from an historically defensive Athens to an offensive Sparta whose military looks everywhere for trouble and finds it? Who is calculating the cost-to-benefit ratio of sending Green Berets and other Special Operations troopers into remote corners of the world to assassinate suspected terrorists?
Ever since the Vietnam War, our presidents have ushered members of Congress into the grandstand where they can boo or cheer military decisions but not make them, despite what the Constitution says right there in Article 1, Section 8: "The Congress shall have power to provide for the common defense."
Crazed & Confused thinks that Obama was right not to release the torture photos. But he ignores the basic problems with Obama's rationale -- transparency is essential to a functioning democracy. It was the clear intent of the Founding Fathers that the government follow a policy of transparency -- in fact, the Constitution requires that Congress publish a journal of its proceedings. If we do not have maximum transparency in our government, then how will we know if we are still a functioning democracy? How will we know if our elected officials are following the Constitution? This is the very sort of thing that Obama ran on. I suggest that he do what he was elected to do and provide more transparency in government by releasing these pictures.
Barack Obama backflipped on his promise to make public photos depicting detainee abuse by U.S. personnel overseas, however one intrepid independent reporter has managed, digging through government files obtained through an ACLU FOIA request, to unearth detailed documents describing the photographs.
U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan took dozens of pictures of their colleagues pointing assault rifles and pistols at the heads and backs of hooded and bound detainees and another photograph showed two male soldiers and one female solider pointing a broom to one detainee "as if I was sticking the end of a broom stick into [his] rectum," according to the female soldier's account as told to an Army criminal investigator.
President Barack Obama said Wednesday he would not release these photographs, reversing a promise he made a month ago, fearing it would stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger U.S. troops.
I found the documents that describes the photographs on the website of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU obtained the files, but not the photographs, in 2005 as part of the organization's wide-ranging Freedom of information Act lawsuit against the federal government related to the Bush administration's treatment of "war on terror" prisoners in U.S. custody.
(h/t to Lady Libertine, who got me thinking about this)
The ACLU fought and won the case to force the Department of Defense to make public by May 28, 2009 "photos depicting the abuse of prisoners by U.S. personnel."
There's been a lot of pushback regarding the release of these photos. I have no reason to believe otherwise, yet I wonder if those who are part of this pushback will succeed in keeping the pictures from being released. Guess we'll find out by May 28.
And when they are released, what will we do? How are we to look at these pictures? How can we prepare ourselves so that this is not just some sensational political event, but a somber confrontation of man's inhumanity to man?
For the Soldier who fights for Truth, calls his enemy his brother. -- William Blake
Jason Leopold had an amazing find when perusing a new released FBI document the ACLU posted on their site earlier this week. [Update: Leopold informs me that the document was released in Dec. 2004, but he caught the info while perusing the ACLU collection over these past months.]
Senior FBI agents stationed in Iraq in 2004 claimed in an e-mail that President George W. Bush signed an executive order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other harsh tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.
The FBI e-mail -- dated May 22, 2004 -- followed disclosures about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and sought guidance on whether FBI agents in Iraq were obligated to report the U.S. military's harsh interrogation of inmates when that treatment violated FBI standards but fit within the guidelines of a presidential executive order.
My ex-wife has been representing a Guantanamo detainee for a few years now. She took a case she couldn't afford and has devoted a significant portion of her resources the last few years to seeking justice for a foreign stranger accused of committing terrorist acts. The struggle has been difficult, because her opponent has been the richest, most powerful country in the world--the government of the United States of America. Her inability to sleep well while someone tortured in her name is the reason I fell in love with her forty years ago. We scarcely communicate, now that our wonderful children are grown, but we did exchange emails today. The impersonal letter she forwarded to me, the subject of this diary, brought me to tears. This diary is to share one small development in a long, difficult struggle being carried forward by a few Americans who stand up for human rights.
In an effort to derive some direction and a way forward to accountability, on March 20, 2009, Colleen Costello of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Jamil Dakwar of the American Civil Liberties Union, spoke before the Inter-American Commission Human Rights, in Washington D.C. The issue: "Accountability for Violations of Human Rights in the United States."
Colleen Costello laid forth the details of our torture, including the waterboarding of Sheik Khalid Mohamed, our detention systems, renditions, and secret prisons.
Michael Ratner spoke with passion concerning the many obstacles confronting our efforts to achieve accountability, including some of the "legal" ones put in place by the Bush Administration, such as the Military Commissions Act, a lack of habeas corpus and how all efforts, thus far, have been thwarted by the Obama administration. That Sen. Leahy has called for a "truth commission" with immunity provisions, but would not lead necessarily to criminal prosecutions. He spoke with a sense of urgency and there truly is one, in terms of the U.S. statute of limitations on torture, we have a window of one and half years to prosecute. Moreover, Ratner pointed out that an Executive Order banning torture can easily be reversed by the next President and thus, accountability is the only conceivable way to assure that the U.S. is no longer a party to torture. One of the panel members of the IACHR reminded Ratner that there was no statute of limitations on the torture in international terms.
Jamil Dakwar spoke concerning the difficulty in obtaining documents because of the "state secrecy" stance, and that they (the UCLA) were able to obtain some documentation through the Freedom of Information Act.
Also speaking was Lewis Amselem, Deputy Permanent Representative of the United States to the Organization of American States (OAS). He spoke about the immediate steps of President Obama to end torture, close down Guantanamo, close CIA prisons by his Executive Orders. He went on and on about these accomplishments without really confronting the issue of accountability.
A Sarah Paoletti, Division of the Legal Clinic, University of Pennsylvania, also spoke briefly.
In the proceedings, and at the conclusion various members of the IACHR, i.e., Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Commissioner of the CIDH, asked what the Commission could do. Santiago A. Canton, Executive Secretary of the CIDH, spoke and asked that documents be produced to the Commission, as well as any cases that have been brought for trial on torture.
The entire video may be seen here. It is about an hour long and very worth while seeing. (Home)
Also, written complaints filed with the IACHR will be posted here.
The Sunday Weekly Torture "Round-up" is intended to be a new regular feature at Daily Kos, capturing stories on the ongoing torture scandal, especially those that might otherwise escape notice. At the same time, we will strive to present an overview of important new developments in the drive to hold the U.S. government responsible for its war crimes, in addition to covering stories concerning torture from other countries, as time and space permit. (Alas, the U.S. has no monopoly on this hideous practice.)
The editors for the WTR are myself, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, and Meteor Blades and we will rotate each week. Interesting or important news or tips concerning torture or civil liberties issues bearing upon it can be emailed to any of these individuals.
There were many new developments this week: the CIA announced it would withhold a list describing 1000s of documents related to the destruction of videotapes depicting torture; an ex-Bush administration official told of administration indifference to evidence of innocence for the great bulk of "enemy combatants"; a major lawsuit against Pentagon contractors accused of torture was allowed to proceed; a "released" Guantanamo hunger striker was refused more humane prison conditions, and more.
The Los Angeles Times had an article over the weekend by Greg Miller, describing the decision by the Obama administration to maintain, in some form, the secret rendition program of the CIA. The program began under the Clinton administration, and was accelerated President Bush. Full details of the program are classified.
In legal terms, extraordinary rendition is the "extrajudicial transfer of a person from one State to another." But for most of us, rendition remains a fancy term for kidnapping, and involves snatching suspected "terrorists" off the streets, or from airports, as in the case of innocent Canadian citizen Maher Arar, snatched out of JFK airport, and secretly flown to Syria. Maher spent over ten months in a "grave-like" cell, and was beaten and tortured into making a false confession.
Last Friday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, long considered one of the most conservative courts in the the nation, rejected the appeal of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who was sentenced in 2005 for conspiracy to assassinate President Bush and make other terror attacks upon U.S. targets on behalf of Al Qaeda. Abu Ali, who is a U.S. citizen and the son of naturalized Jordanian parents, was arrested in June 2003 in Saudi Arabia and held there until the U.S. requested his extradition almost two years later. He was 23 years old and attending a Saudi university at the time of his arrest.
During his incarceration, the Saudis refused his repeated requests to see an attorney. At no time has Abu Ali ever been linked to an actual terrorist event or action. In 2003, the government secretly broke into his parents' home, utilizing provisions of the U.S.A. Patriot Act that allows warrantless search and seizure to go fishing for evidence of Abu Ali's "dangerousness."
When earlier this month the ACLU released a new slew of FOIA documents -- unredacted portions of Admiral Church's 2005 report on detainee abuses at "war on terror" prisons abroad -- the spin machine of the American Psychological Association sprang into action. APA propagandist, and Ethics Director, Stephen Behnke was called upon to take up the cudgels, whereupon he wrote an unctious, dissembling letter to the ACLU.
In a letter dated May 15, Behnke praised ACLU for "uncovering details surrounding the treatment of detainees at detention facilities run by the U.S. government around the world." Then he reiterated APA's paper commitment to "the humane treatment of detainees." In between the lofty presentation of ideals and grand commitments, Behnke also made the following points (quoting from his letter, which has circulated via email, but not to my knowledge is online -- bold text below is my editorial emphasis):
Following a pivotal article by Jeff Stein at Congressional Quarterly a few weeks back, today's Washington Post published an important article today, "Detainees Allege Being Drugged, Questioned." The story, by Post staff writer Joby Warrick, notes U.S. denials in using drug injections for coercive purposes during interrogations.
Adel al-Nusairi, a Saudi national imprisoned for years at Guanatanmo, and now released without charges, has a different memory:
"I'd fall asleep" after the shot, Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, recalled in an interview with his attorney at the military prison in Cuba, according to notes. After being roused, Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace.
"I was completely gone," he remembered. "I said, 'Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I'm a member of al-Qaeda, I will.'"
The U.S. government will soon begin collecting DNA samples from all citizens arrested in connection with any federal crime and from many immigrants detained by federal authorities, adding genetic identifiers from more than 1 million individuals a year to the swiftly growing federal law enforcement DNA database.
The policy will substantially expand the current practice of routinely collecting DNA samples from only those convicted of federal crimes...
Anyone now arrested of a federal crime will have their DNA collected. With the past examples of abuse of the justice system by the Bush administration, it isn't difficult to imagine how this change in policy could be abused. When the policy is implemented, roughly 1.2 million people a year will have their DNA collected.
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
