Praying for Victims of US-Sponsored Torture

We sponsored a candlelit vigil on the grounds of Schuylkill Friends Meeting in Phoenixville, PA, on June 26, designated as the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture by the United Nations. CCRCAT members and other supporters gathered around the “Torture is Wrong” banner erected on the meetinghouse grounds facing Route 23. After reciting a prayer of recommitment to the abolition of US-sponsored torture, they lit candles and stood in silent solidarity with prisoners abused and tortured while in US custody at Guantánamo Bay and in secret sites around the world.

Excellent summary

Andy Worthington provides an excellent post summarizing some of the main points of the McClatchy investigative series, as well as this week’s Senate hearings:

http://tinyurl.com/59fnox

If it was good enough for the Indians…

We now know that five lawyers, calling themselves the “War Council,” in compliance with orders from the President and Vice President,

drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military’s code of justice, the federal court system and America’s international treaties in order to prevent anyone — from soldiers on the ground to the president — from being held accountable for activities that at other times have been considered war crimes.

The idea for military commissions was actually resurrected by John Yoo from procedures used during the Indian wars:

The military commissions that the U.S. used against Native Americans during the mid-19th century were often ad hoc and frequently resulted in natives being hanged or shot.

Read the rest of this report at:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38886.html

The report is part of a series by McClatchy journalist Tom Lasseter, who carried out an eight-month investigation on the detention and abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Guantánamo:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38773.html

Supreme Court restores habeas corpus rights to Gitmo detainees

In a stunning blow to the Bush Administration in its war-on-terrorism policies, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to pursue habeas challenges to their detention. The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights. If Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion….

The Court also declared that detainees do not have to go through the special civilian court review process that Congress created in 2005, since that is not an adequate substitute for habeas rights. …

Congress, it concluded, unconstitutionally suspended the writ in enacting that [Detainee Treatment ]Act.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/court-gives-detainees-habeas-rights/

Nice to know the Supreme Court can still do the right thing! (But that 5-4 split sure is scary!!)

“Locked Up Alone” – Human Rights Watch Report on Guantánamo

Locked Up Alone: Detention Conditions and Mental Health at Guantanamo

http://hrw.org/reports/2008/us0608/

The 54-page report, “Locked Up Alone: Detention Conditions and Mental Health at Guantanamo,” documents the conditions in the various “camps” at the detention center, in which approximately 185 of the 270 detainees are housed in facilities akin to “supermax” prisons even though they have not yet been convicted of a crime. These detainees have extremely limited contact with other human beings, spend 22 hours a day alone in small cells with little or no natural light or fresh air, are not provided any educational opportunities, and are given little more than a single book and the Koran to occupy their time. Even their two hours of “recreation” time – which is sometimes provided in the middle of the night – generally takes place in single-cell cages so that detainees cannot physically interact with one another.

from the blog of attorney Candace Gordon

“Guantanamo detainees who have not even been charged with a crime are being warehoused in conditions that are in many ways harsher than those reserved for the most dangerous, convicted criminals in the United States,” said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. “Security measures don’t justify locking people in windowless cells 22 hours a day, for months and years on end, with almost no opportunity for human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation.”