Anyone else have more details? Did the Justice Department present information to the judge prior to this ruling? This sounds really weird to me.
quote:In his ruling, Judge TS Ellis stressed that by rejecting Mr el-Masri's lawsuit he made no judgement on the strength or otherwise of his allegations.
"[The result reached here] is in no way an adjudication of, or comment on, the merit or lack of merit of Mr el-Masri's complaint," he said.
"Further, it is also important that nothing in this ruling should be taken as a sign of judicial approval or disapproval of rendition programmes.
"In times of war, our country, chiefly through the executive branch, must often take exceptional steps to thwart the enemy."
quote:The US has criticised Egypt after an appeal court refused to hear a plea by Ayman Nour, an opposition leader jailed for five years. ... In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack criticised the ruling.
"The Egyptian government's handling of this case represents both a miscarriage of justice by international standards and a setback for the democratic aspirations of the Egyptian people," he said.
posted
also, the UN's committee on torture came out with its recommendations regarding the US status on these issues. They recommended stopping "rendition" in any case where a prisoner "may" be tortured. We said we don't do it in cases where it is "more likely than not" that the person would be tortured. Hmmm....
They also said we should close the Guantanamo detention facility.
posted
Ellis' ruling makes me wince. I don't like it because it smells fishy.
All the same, I bristle at the UN recommending anything to our government, especially with the reports of UN abuse of refugees in Liberia.
Talk about your irony.
Ironic or not, we've got to get clear and internationally confirmed proof that we're not engaging in torture, out to our allies and to the world.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Apparently, the US-approved definition of torture, at least as it relates to Guantanamo is not the "normal" one in use by the rest of the world.
Our definition of torture (at least in 2002): "anything that causes death or major organ failure."
That from this BBC article on hunger strikes and the World Medical Association take on force feeding the Guantanamo detainees.
My problem in all of this is that the US destroys its credibility if it isn't adhering strictly to international law. We undermine our important role as an example in the world if we are going to excuse our bad behavior with "everyone else is doing it."
The UN has its own problems, and they should clean their house. Agreed.
That doesn't give us an excuse either.
The UN doesn't act in my name. The US government does. Correspondingly, I care more about what our government does, and fails to do.
I like the concept of the UN, but in actual practice, it's so limited in what it can do, and in how well it can control the coalitions of forces that it fields, that I suspect it should probably re-examine its vision and mission with a serious eye toward dropping some parts of it.
I would hope that one of the pieces it keeps is the part dedicated to calling out governments on their human rights record.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote: Our definition of torture (at least in 2002): "anything that causes death or major organ failure."
To be more accurate, the article stated that "He said the definition of torture issued at the camp in 2002 as actions that caused only "death or major organ failure" " The He is Dr David Nicholl, a UK neurologist who initiated the Lancet letter. Also from the article: "But Dr Nicholl said that "horrible as it may sound" the doctor had to conform to the wishes of hunger strikers, even if it led to their deaths." If we let them starve themselves to death I bet we would be receiving letters from Doctors who say that we have to keep them alive if they are in our care, even if it meant force feeding them. Or maybe we should? Would anyone have problems with us letting them starve themselves to death, I mean other than the rest of the detainees accusing us of starving them to death?
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I have problems with the whole thing, actually. When there are ten year old boys and taxi drivers as prisoners in Guantanamo, it seems pretty messed up.
Posts: 51 | Registered: May 2006
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And one can be a taxi driver and just be a taxi driver. I'd just feel better if I didn't keep reading about "oops, we've kept the wrong person locked up for several years, dang, we've tortured some guy but it turns out he didn't do anything." How about, "we've gotten a whole gang of nasty types who wanted to blow us sky-high, good job?" Or, am I AGAIN being naive???
Posts: 51 | Registered: May 2006
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posted
DK, as of 2005, the US passed a law banning practices that were not allowed under the treaty we'd signed in 1987 -- the source of our requirement to submit a report to the UN Committee on Torture in the first place.
One wonders:
1) what was going on between 1987 and 2005 when we finally put those provisions into our law?
2) Why so many accusations (and in some case photos) are revealing activities that are counted as torture under the treaty we signed keep coming up.
I agree that some of it may be false accusations.
I also agree that we may have felt like we had "adequate" laws to protect against torture already on the books between 1987 and 2005, despite having passed a new law at that time.
I disagree (at least with this judge in VA) that we shouldn't look at it in open court.
If it turns out there's no proof, then fine, there's no proof. Good for us.
If it turns out that we can prove the allegations are false, even better.
But I don't believe for a minute that secrecy about our use of banned practices (whether we call them torture or not) is vital to "national security."
It's probably vital to not embarrasing some high-placed people, or maybe it's distracting them from other duties. Okay...I'll grant that.
but "national security?" Seems a stretch.
It seem sot me that the Administration could simply refuse to answer specific questions during the trial if they touched on issues with real security implications.
But this judge appears to be convinced that even HOLDING the trial would harm national security interests.
I don't see how.
I'd like to understand more.
I find the whole thing VERY disturbing.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I think you are AGAIN being naive. Did you read the article that you linked to or just glance at the headling? During the days, they were allowed to run on the grass inside the compound. Sometimes, the soldiers would play football with them. Asadullah even developed a certain prowess at chess. The boys were taught to read and write English. It was the first time they had attended anything resembling school. Asadullah was also given books in Pashto and a copy of the Koran. Sometimes we were allowed to watch television. I liked to watch movies," he recalls.
The soldiers assigned to guard them became friends. "They were so kind to us," he says.
Almost a year after he arrived, he was called into the office of a commanding officer and told he was going home. Military officials said the boys had provided useful intelligence but had no further value and were no longer a threat to the United States. He had spent 17 months in U.S. captivity. Private W, a guard who had become his friend, gave him a football and a chessboard to take back to Afghanistan. "The guards gave me a big hug and said, "Be good. Go to school,' " he recalls. She barely recognized her son. His voice had changed. He had whiskers and a sprinkle of acne.
Wow, at 12 this kid has whiskers and acne!
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
DK, as of 2005, the US passed a law banning practices that were not allowed under the treaty we'd signed in 1987 -- the source of our requirement to submit a report to the UN Committee on Torture in the first place.
One wonders:
1) what was going on between 1987 and 2005 when we finally put those provisions into our law?
2) Why so many accusations (and in some case photos) are revealing activities that are counted as torture under the treaty we signed keep coming up.
I agree that some of it may be false accusations.
I also agree that we may have felt like we had "adequate" laws to protect against torture already on the books between 1987 and 2005, despite having passed a new law at that time.
I disagree (at least with this judge in VA) that we shouldn't look at it in open court.
If it turns out there's no proof, then fine, there's no proof. Good for us.
If it turns out that we can prove the allegations are false, even better.
But I don't believe for a minute that secrecy about our use of banned practices (whether we call them torture or not) is vital to "national security."
It's probably vital to not embarrasing some high-placed people, or maybe it's distracting them from other duties. Okay...I'll grant that.
but "national security?" Seems a stretch.
It seem sot me that the Administration could simply refuse to answer specific questions during the trial if they touched on issues with real security implications.
But this judge appears to be convinced that even HOLDING the trial would harm national security interests.
I don't see how.
I'd like to understand more.
I find the whole thing VERY disturbing.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I think you are AGAIN being naive. Did you read the article that you linked to or just glance at the headling? During the days, they were allowed to run on the grass inside the compound. Sometimes, the soldiers would play football with them. Asadullah even developed a certain prowess at chess. The boys were taught to read and write English. It was the first time they had attended anything resembling school. Asadullah was also given books in Pashto and a copy of the Koran. Sometimes we were allowed to watch television. I liked to watch movies," he recalls.
The soldiers assigned to guard them became friends. "They were so kind to us," he says.
Almost a year after he arrived, he was called into the office of a commanding officer and told he was going home. Military officials said the boys had provided useful intelligence but had no further value and were no longer a threat to the United States. He had spent 17 months in U.S. captivity. Private W, a guard who had become his friend, gave him a football and a chessboard to take back to Afghanistan. "The guards gave me a big hug and said, "Be good. Go to school,' " he recalls. She barely recognized her son. His voice had changed. He had whiskers and a sprinkle of acne.
Wow, at 12 this kid has whiskers and acne!
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Why would you assume I didn't read the article? Are you saying it's ok to hold children in supposed terrorist prison camps (where their parents have no idea if they are alive or dead) if you can report back positive press? Isn't that a bit naive? With all due respect, I don't think we're going to agree on this.
Posts: 51 | Registered: May 2006
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posted
From BBC article on the prisoners' attack today on Guantanamo. This bit is about general state of things:
quote:The military says there have been 39 suicide attempts in the camp since 2002, and hunger strikes have been common as detainees protest against their continued detention without trial.
About 460 detainees are held at Guantanamo, which opened after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Most detainees are being held without charge or trial, and lawyers who have visited the facility say many of them suffer from depression.
39 suicide attempts in a population of roughly 460 people?
That doesn't reall square well with that nice friendly "give the kid a football and send him home to mom a changed man..." feel-good story you posted DK.
Sure, there might be some prisoners that the guards befriend, but one nice story doesn't change what appear to me to be the general description of conditions at this prison.
Not our proudest moment...not by a long shot.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Just to be clear, suicide attempt rates are generally expressed as some number (low-to-high double digits) per 100,000 population.
Even adjusting the denominator at G-mo to be an annual number (that 39 was over 4 years), the suicide attempt rate there is in the double digits per just under 2000 person years, that's two orders of magnitude higher than what would be considered horribly high for the most attempt-prone parts of the US population.
In other words, yes, the number is alarming.
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