There has been something artificially over-heated about the international reaction to the video of four American soldiers urinating on the bodies of their dead Taliban enemies in Afghanistan. It was, of course, a fairly disgusting thing to do.

But all the breastbeating about how the men’s “egregious inhumanity” had brought “disgrace to their armed forces” and “dishonour to their nation” had something of bluster about it. How could anybody do such a thing, asked people who had never been to war, heard their wounded friends scream or seen them die, blown to pieces, before their very eyes.

There may yet be demonstrations and deadly riots around the world in protest. But I suspect not. This is no Abu Ghraib, for the scenes of degraded torture in that Iraqi prison were inflicted upon the living rather than the dead. But what the two have in common is that both have exposed a systematic pattern of abuse in a culture which had been nurtured or authorised at higher levels.

The Taliban, for all their perfunctory condemnation, have announced that the video will not affect the process of political negotiating that has begun in Afghanistan. As part of a deal to bring a modicum of stability in that country ahead of the withdrawal of US combat troops in 2014, Washington has offered to allow them to open a political office in Qatar. The Taliban are far more concerned about that than the desecration of three dead bodies. They and their al-Qa’ida allies are, after all, happy enough to desecrate living bodies, stoning to death young women who have had the ill fortune to be raped, or cutting the throats of hostages and filming it for the internet.

Bad things happen in war. When men have been under extreme fire, or seen their best friend die, anger and hatred flow freely. Enemies are dehumanised. Contempt for the other is a battlefield weapon. Young soldiers – and nearly 40 per cent of the US Marine Corps are below the age of 22 – are prone to callow as well as gallows humour. Some of them do stupid things. With a total of 90,000 American troops on the ground in Afghanistan, the real wonder is that there haven’t been more videos like this. British soldiers did worse things in the Second World War. They just weren’t able to video it and stick it on YouTube…

Read more here.

Wednesday, America’s detention camp at Guantánamo Bay will have been open for 10 years. For seven of them, I was held there without explanation or charge. During that time my daughters grew up without me. They were toddlers when I was imprisoned, and were never allowed to visit or speak to me by phone.

Some American politicians say that people at Guantánamo are terrorists, but I have never been a terrorist. Had I been brought before a court when I was seized, my children’s lives would not have been torn apart, and my family would not have been thrown into poverty. It was only after the United States Supreme Court ordered the government to defend its actions before a federal judge that I was finally able to clear my name and be with them again.

I left Algeria in 1990 to work abroad. In 1997 my family and I moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina at the request of my employer, the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates. I served in the Sarajevo office as director of humanitarian aid for children who had lost relatives to violence during the Balkan conflicts. In 1998, I became a Bosnian citizen. We had a good life, but all of that changed after 9/11.

When I arrived at work on the morning of Oct. 19, 2001, an intelligence officer was waiting for me. He asked me to accompany him to answer questions. I did so, voluntarily — but afterward I was told that I could not go home. The United States had demanded that local authorities arrest me and five other men. News reports at the time said the United States believed that I was plotting to blow up its embassy in Sarajevo. I had never — for a second — considered this.

The fact that the United States had made a mistake was clear from the beginning. Bosnia’s highest court investigated the American claim, found that there was no evidence against me and ordered my release. But instead, the moment I was released American agents seized me and the five others. We were tied up like animals and flown to Guantánamo, the American naval base in Cuba. I arrived on Jan. 20, 2002.

I still had faith in American justice. I believed my captors would quickly realize their mistake and let me go. But when I would not give the interrogators the answers they wanted — how could I, when I had done nothing wrong? — they became more and more brutal. I was kept awake for many days straight. I was forced to remain in painful positions for hours at a time. These are things I do not want to write about; I want only to forget.

I went on a hunger strike for two years because no one would tell me why I was being imprisoned. Twice each day my captors would shove a tube up my nose, down my throat and into my stomach so they could pour food into me. It was excruciating, but I was innocent and so I kept up my protest.

In 2008, my demand for a fair legal process went all the way to America’s highest court. In a decision that bears my name, the Supreme Court declared that “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” It ruled that prisoners like me, no matter how serious the accusations, have a right to a day in court. The Supreme Court recognized a basic truth: the government makes mistakes. And the court said that because “the consequence of error may be detention of persons for the duration of hostilities that may last a generation or more, this is a risk too significant to ignore.”

Five months later, Judge Richard J. Leon, of the Federal District Court in Washington, reviewed all of the reasons offered to justify my imprisonment, including secret information I never saw or heard. The government abandoned its claim of an embassy bomb plot just before the judge could hear it. After the hearing, he ordered the government to free me and four other men who had been arrested in Bosnia.

I will never forget sitting with the four other men in a squalid room at Guantánamo, listening over a fuzzy speaker as Judge Leon read his decision in a Washington courtroom. He implored the government not to appeal his ruling, because “seven years of waiting for our legal system to give them an answer to a question so important is, in my judgment, more than plenty.” I was freed, at last, on May 15, 2009.

Today, I live in Provence with my wife and children. France has given us a home, and a new start. I have experienced the pleasure of reacquainting myself with my daughters and, in August 2010, the joy of welcoming a new son, Yousef. I am learning to drive, attending vocational training and rebuilding my life. I hope to work again serving others, but so far the fact that I spent seven and a half years as a Guantánamo prisoner has meant that only a few human rights organizations have seriously considered hiring me. I do not like to think of Guantánamo. The memories are filled with pain. But I share my story because 171 men remain there. Among them is Belkacem Bensayah, who was seized in Bosnia and sent to Guantánamo with me.

About 90 prisoners have been cleared for transfer out of Guantánamo. Some of them are from countries like Syria or China — where they would face torture if sent home — or Yemen, which the United States considers unstable. And so they sit as captives, with no end in sight — not because they are dangerous, not because they attacked America, but because the stigma of Guantánamo means they have no place to go, and America will not give a home to even one of them.

I’m told that my Supreme Court case is now read in law schools. Perhaps one day that will give me satisfaction, but so long as Guantánamo stays open and innocent men remain there, my thoughts will be with those left behind in that place of suffering and injustice.

Photo: Smoking Gun

Bizarre doesn’t even begin to describe these two! From the Smoking Gun:

Two young Milwaukee women were arrested this week after an 18-year-old Arizona man–who traveled to Wisconsin by bus after meeting one of the suspects online–told cops that he was held captive in the duo’s apartment for two days and slashed and stabbed more than 300 times as part of an apparent satanic sex ritual.

A Milwaukee Police Department search warrant for the East Knapp Street apartment where the man was held details his ordeal. The warrant authorized cops to seize an assortment of items from the residence, including “knives or other cutting instruments,” blood and DNA evidence, duct tape, restraining devices, and “Books or literature relating to Satanism or the occult.”

The police investigation began Sunday night after cops responded to a report of a possible stabbing. Officers found the Arizona man “bleeding from the neck, arms and back.” He told cops that after arriving at the home of a woman he met online, he “was bound and was stabbed numerous times over a timeframe of what he described as ‘two days.’”…

[continues at the Smoking Gun]

Photo: SlimVirgin (CC)

AsiaOne reports:

The Chinese media has reported on an extraordinary account of a mother bear saving her cub from a life of torture by strangling it and then killing itself. The bears were kept in a farm located in a remote area in the North-West of China. The bears on the farm had their gall bladders milked daily for ‘bear bile,’ which is used as a remedy in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

It was reported that the bears are kept in tiny cages known as ‘crush cages’, as the bears have no room to manoeuvre and are literally crushed. The bile is harvested by making a permanent hole or fistula in the bears’ abdomen and gall bladder.

As the hole is never closed, the animals are suspect to various infections and diseases including tumours, cancers and death from peritonitis. The bears are fitted with an iron vest, as they often try to kill themselves by hitting their stomach as they are unable to bear the pain.A person who was on the farm in place of a friend witnessed the procedures and told Reminbao.com that they were inhumane.

The witness also claimed that a mother bear broke out its cage when it heard its cub howl in fear before a worker punctured its stomach to milk the bile.

Read more here.

Kurnaz’s detainment occurred while he was visiting Pakistan with a pacifist anti-poverty organization. He suspects his name was randomly given to authorities by someone in order to receive the $3,000 reward for reporting terrorists. The whole ordeal recalls the Spanish Inquisition:

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled Monday two men can move forward with a civil lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Tribune reports the Court upheld a decision from a federal judge allowing a lawsuit which holds Rumsfeld personally responsible for the torture of Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, two former defense contractors in Iraq.

In 2006, while Vance and Ertel were working in Iraq for Shield Group Security, a private contractor, they began to suspect their employer of involvement in illegal arms trading, bribery, and other activities. The two reported their concerns to the U.S. Government and soon became FBI informants. According to Courthouse News Service, Shield soon confiscated Vance and Ertel’s credentials, which effectively trapped them in the Red Zone. According to court documents, the two men called their government contacts, who told them “they should interpret Shield Group Security’s actions as taking them hostage, and should barricade themselves with weapons in a room of the compound. They were assured that U.S. Forces would come to rescue them.”

After U.S. Forces picked up the two and they shared their information with military, Vance and Ertel were arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded and taken to Camp Prosperity near Baghdad. After two days at Camp Prosperity, they were shipped to Camp Cropper where they were “detained incommunicado,” kept in solitary confinement and tortured. According to the court report, the men were kept in cold cells covered in feces, often deprived of food and water, walled, denied medical care and subject to various forms of psychological torture.

Read the full post at Chicagoist

I have on good authority that this song was played at something called the “Jihadi Bar,” a place where CIA interrogators working at a Black Site went to unwind. That and other secrets of undisclosed torture prisons are found within my interview with ex-interrogator Glenn Carle for Danger Room.

Much like at Guantanamo, detainees at this specific Black Site — I don’t know this for sure, but will irresponsibly speculate based on certain clues that it was in Afghanistan but not at Bagram — had heavy metal blasted at loud volumes, constantly, to torture them. Alas, Carle couldn’t tell me if one of the songs he heard there was “Bodies” by Drowning Pool, a staple on the torturers’ mixtape of the 00s.

More on Spencer Ackerman’s Blog

Note, they are not necessarily advocating vegetarianism or the elimination of slaughterhouses (although there are many benefits to reducing industrialized slaughterhouses including cutting down on pollution, increase agricultural land and reduction of animal cruelty), but they argue the unfair treatment of live animals being exported to other countries.

Warning: The video below include graphic material that may be difficult to watch.

It has been a persistent worry of civil libertarians that violations of the rights of non-citizens would eventually contaminate the ways citizens are treated, too; that a process of “enemy creep” would, in the end, result in the Guantanamo-ization of American terrorism suspects.

When rights were first denied to captives at Guantanamo Bay, the Bush administration argued that a prison in Cuba should not be considered subject to the constitutional principles that apply to Americans everywhere or to anyone within the territorial boundaries of the U.S. It is, however, quite another matter, as in the King hearings, to single out Muslims or others in our midst as potential terrorists and then to argue that when arrested—even if they are U.S. citizens or captured or tried on U.S. soil—they should be denied the protections of U.S. law.

At the moment, the most alarming example of “enemy creep” can be found in the case of Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private who allegedly downloaded hundreds of thousands of classified documents from Army computer systems and turned them over to WikiLeaks. He is now being held on 24 charges in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement in a brig at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, while awaiting a court martial slated to begin later this spring.

There, among other punitive forms of treatment, he has reportedly been denied his clothes at night (though he is now apparently allowed to sleep in a coarse, tear-proof gown), supposedly as a form of self-protection. In captivity, nakedness, as the infamous abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison demonstrated, is above all a form of humiliation, and often the first step towards physical and sexual abuse, including torture. Manning, neither Muslim nor accused of terrorism, is nonetheless clearly considered by his captors an enemy of the nation, a traitor. As a result, he is being kept under conditions which should make Americans take note of the blurring of, and crossing of, previously sacrosanct lines and the dismantling of long-established rights when it comes to defining and punishing “the enemy.” Though no jihadi terrorist, Manning, too, is being punished before being tried for the crime of threatening national security.

Thanks to Mukasey, Kaplan, King, those overseeing the treatment of Manning, and others, the embrace of cruel standards when it comes to alleged enemies of the state is gaining traction. These officials and former officials seem to be part of a process, remarkably uncommented upon, that is turning previously unthinkable rhetoric into normal discourse and intolerance into a rationale for challenging the rights of anyone accused of violating the country’s security.

Women in line to vote at 2011 Egyptian constitution referendum. Photo: Mona (CC)

Via Amnesty International:

Amnesty International has today called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate serious allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters arrested in Tahrir Square earlier this month.

After army officers violently cleared the square of protesters on 9 March, at least 18 women were held in military detention. Amnesty International has been told by women protesters that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to ‘virginity checks’ and threatened with prostitution charges.

‘Virginity tests’ are a form of torture when they are forced or coerced.

“Forcing women to have ‘virginity tests’ is utterly unacceptable. Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women,” said Amnesty International. “All members of the medical profession must refuse to take part in such so-called ‘tests’.”

[Continues at Amnesty International]

The protesters who stormed the offices of Egyptian state security this weekend say the buildings are proof of “the greatest privacy invasion in history”, filled with transcripts of phone conversations, surveillance reports and stark reminders of the torture carried out inside.

Hundreds of protesters seized the state security building – a prominent symbol of the Egyptian government’s brutality – after hours of protests in 6th of October City on Saturday night. The takeover was the climax of several days of protests outside other state security buildings.

One photo from inside the state security building showed a room full of shredded papers, the pile reaching almost to the ceiling. Egyptians who entered the building also found computers and hard drives that had been destroyed. And a video posted on YouTube shows the charred remains of a massive pile of documents that state security apparently set on fire in the courtyard of the building. Fires have also been reported at other state security offices in recent days.

Thousands of documents were intact, though, and many have now been handed over to the public prosecutor. Some of them show surveillance of prominent Egyptians: There are transcripts of phone calls made by Mohamed ElBaradei, for example, or by Hamdi Kandil, a journalist who was a fierce critic of Mubarak’s regime. Other files documented the lives of ordinary citizens.

Documents described by protesters also showed evidence of vote rigging during last year’s parliamentary elections in Egypt (which many observers at the time called fraudulent). The documents contained lists of candidates from particular districts, and the number of votes each candidate would receive.

Several Egyptians reported finding a whole room full of what appeared to be sex tapes. A photo posted on Twitter showed one tape labelled: “Sexual encounter between a Kuwaiti princess and an Egyptian man.”

The building also contained stark evidence of the torture and abuse many detainees suffered inside. One photograph from Twitter showed a man holding up an electric baton and a cache of handcuffs. Another photo showed a barren cell, with nothing but a toilet in the floor and a tap against the wall for drinking and washing.

Photo: Jerry Jackson (CC)

After Amnesty raised concerns that the Egyptian executive of Google was being held without reason, he was released today, 10 days after his disappearance. CNN reports:

Google executive Wael Ghonim was released Monday in Egypt, the company announced.

“Huge relief — Wael Ghonim has been released. Our love to him and his family,” the company tweeted shortly after 8 p.m. in Cairo (1 p.m. ET).

Ghonim’s Twitter account, which had not had a posting since he went missing January 28, carried a tweet around the same time.

“Freedom is a bless (sic) that deserves fighting for it,” the tweet said, ending with the hashtag “#Jan25,” a reference to the Egypt protests.

Minutes later, Ghonim added this tweet: “Gave my 2 cents to Dr. Hosam Badrawy. who was reason why I am out today. Asked him resign cause that’s the only way I’ll respect him.”

Hossam Badrawi, often described as a relatively liberal politician, was recently elevated to become secretary general of the ruling National Democratic Party.

[Continues at CNN]

Former Haitian leader Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier has been questioned by judicial officials and was later led out of his hotel by police.

He was questioned over claims he stole from the country’s treasury. It is not clear whether he has been arrested.

Haiti’s chief prosecutor and a judge were seen arriving at his hotel in Port-au-Prince earlier on Tuesday.

Mr Duvalier, who ruled the country for 15 years before being ousted in 1986, made a surprise return to Haiti Sunday.

“He will be questioned and he will remain at the disposal of the judicial system,” a senior government official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters news agency earlier.

[Continues at BBC News]

The United Nations is looking into a complaint on behalf of a US soldier who is said to have been mistreated while held since May in US army custody pending trial.

Bradley Manning, an army private suspected of giving classified documents to WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website, is being held in solitary confinement at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, and faces a court martial sometime in 2011.

The office of Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture in Geneva, received a complaint from one of Manning’s supporters alleging conditions amount to torture. Visitors say he spends at least 23 hours a day alone in a cell.

The UN could ask the US to stop any violations it finds. However, the Pentagon has denied mistreating Manning.

A Marine Corps spokesman says the military is keeping Manning safe, secure and ready for trial.

Political prisoner?

Manning was charged in July with leaking classified material, including a video posted by WikiLeaks of a 2007 US Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed a Reuters news photographer and his driver.

He is suspected of leaking troves of other material to the government secret-spilling site, which is in the process of posting more than 250,000 secret US State Department cables.

Manning has not commented publicly on whether he is the source of the leaks.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the organisation’s “technology is set up so we don’t know” the sources of the material it gets.

Read more here.

The 660 or so people being held at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have never been tried or even charged with crimes. They can be held for the rest of their lives at the whim of the government, and the military has floated the possibility of executing some of them. In an effort to remedy this disgraceful destruction of rights and the law, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a petition seeking habeas corpus, which would force the government to Constitutionally process the prisoners (i.e., quick and speedy trials, jury of peers, right to confront accusers, etc.).

A district court refused, buying the feds’ ridiculous argument that because the US military base is located on the island of Cuba, it isn’t subject to US law, though it also is most definitely not subject to Cuban law. Following this line of argument, no law applies there, making it an autonomous zone, as devised by Hakim Bey, or an interzone, from the works of William Burroughs. I’m sure that the men and women stationed at Guantanamo Bay would be surprised to know that they can apparently steal, rape, and kill with impunity. Go ahead, snort coke off your commanding officer’s desk. It’s all right, because US law doesn’t apply.

Seriously, it’s hard to see how any court bought such a transparently stupid, self-serving argument. The Center for Constitutional Rights has appealed this boneheaded decision to the Supreme Court, which triggered a flood of amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs from some powerful individuals and groups who used the chance to lambaste the concentration camp 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

1. Former US Diplomats

Who: 23 former US diplomats, many of whom also served as Assistant Secretaries of State or in other high-level positions.

Excerpts: “This undermines what has long been one of our proudest diplomatic advantages—the nation’s Constitutional guaranty, enforced by an independent judiciary, against arbitrary government.”

“The world has taken due note of the fact that the United States has incarcerated these petitioners in Guantanamo and that there has been no effort to charge, try or judge them under law. This has generated international concern. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has undertaken precautionary measures. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has spoken out. The International Committee of the Red Cross has gone on record. The British Court of Appeal in the Abbasi case has expressed its displeasure. The Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a court that the United States helped create, has issued its own protest. And Shirin Ebadi, the recipient of the most recent Nobel Peace Prize, referred specifically to Guantanamo in her acceptance remarks as an affront to universal human rights.

“Citizens of foreign countries cannot assume that what happened to the Guantanamo prisoners cannot happen to them. It will not be evident why, if the Executive Branch can detain prisoners in Guantanamo free of judicial inquiry, it cannot expand the practice to establish a global criminal justice system with other prison camps like Guantanamo, similarly subject to no legal oversight and in which any foreigner deemed a danger by some official might be detained indefinitely. Nor will it be evident why such a practice could not reach out to persons within the United States or even to American citizens.”

2. Former US Government Officials

Who: “[F]ormer US government officials who have exercised legal responsibility over matters concerning the US Naval Base at Guantanamo, the Panama Canal, or other US bases on foreign soil and those whose responsibilities substantially involved the scope of U.S. jurisdiction and activities abroad.”

Excerpts: “Although Guantanamo is unusual, it is not sui generis. History records at least three other examples of territory outside US territorial borders and sovereignty, but still under the complete jurisdiction and control of the United States: the Canal Zone, the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and the former American sector in Berlin. In each of these instances, US courts have, by extrapolation from the Insular Cases, found fundamental constitutional rights to be applicable to citizens and aliens within these territories. As in Guantanamo, the United States for strategic reasons gained full powers of jurisdiction and control over these territories, without ever possessing actual sovereignty.”

“If the Government denies that foreign nationals have rights, then by confining them at Guantanamo, it is engaged not in legal detention, but in a lawless exercise of naked force.”

“The Due Process Clause [of the Fourth Amendment] is phrased in universal terms, protecting any ‘person’ rather than ‘citizens’ or members of ‘the people.’ Nor does its wording suggest limitations as to place.”

“Maintaining involuntary captives of the United States as rightless outlaws because of their captive status would revive the logic of slavery, a constitutional practice that this country has long abandoned.

“In any event, the Constitution undeniably protects involuntary subjects, such as children who may be too young to form voluntary connections.”

“If the Due Process Clause does not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, the Government would have effective discretion to starve them, to beat them, and to kill them, with or without hearings and with or without evidence of any wrongdoing.”

3. Former American POWs

Who: “Leslie H. Jackson, Edward Jackfert, and Neal Harrington, former American prisoners of war detained by the German and Japanese governments during World War II.”

Excerpt: “As these examples [occupied Germany, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, and the Persian Gulf] show, the use of tribunals traditionally has been an integral component of the United States’ treatment of persons captured on enemy soil. The Government’s current practice of imprisoning foreign citizens indefinitely without providing them with an individualized determination of their status represents a sharp break with this historical commitment. Allowing access to the courts is the only means for these detainees to achieve the narrow redress they seek— individualized determinations of their status as required by the Geneva Conventions and US military regulations.”

4. Retired US Military Officers

Who: “[T]hree retired military officers. Each one formerly served as the Judge Advocate General or the senior legal advisor for a branch of the United States military, and has extensive experience with US military regulations and the Laws of War.”

Excerpts: “The United States has also demanded application of the principles codified in the Geneva Conventions to captured US service personnel, even when they were taken prisoner under circumstances when the Conventions, technically, did not apply. For example, following the capture of US Warrant Officer Michael Durant by forces under the control of Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed in 1993, the United States demanded assurances that Durant’s treatment would be consistent with thebroad protections afforded under the Conventions, even though, ‘[u]nder a strict interpretation of the Third Geneva Convention’s applicability, Durant’s captors would not be bound to follow the convention because they were not a ‘state.’”

“Invoking international human rights standards, the United States also has condemned foreign governments that have held detainees incommunicado, depriving them of the ability to seek judicial review of their confinements. The United States, for example, objected recently when the Liberian government arrested journalist Hassan Bility and held him incommunicado on the purported ground that he was an ‘illegal combatant’ involved in terrorist activity.”

“Yet even as American officials condemn other nations for detaining people indefinitely without access to a court or tribunal, authoritarian regimes elsewhere are pointing to US treatment of the Guantanamo prisoners as justification for such actions. Eritrea’s Ambassador to the United States defended his own government’s roundup of journalists by claiming that their detention without charge was consistent with the United States’ detention of material witnesses and aliens suspected by the United States of terrorist activities.”

5. Fred Korematsu

Who: “More than sixty years ago, as a young man, Fred Korematsu challenged the constitutionality of President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1942 Executive Order that authorized the internment of all persons of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast of the United States. He was convicted and sent to prison. In Korematsu v. United States, this Court upheld his conviction, explaining that because the United States was at war, the government could constitutionally intern Mr. Korematsu, without a hearing, and without any adjudicative determination that he had done anything wrong.”

Excerpts: “Although certain aspects of the ‘war against terrorism’ may be unprecedened, the challenges to constitutional liberties these cases present are similar to those the nation has encountered throughout its history. The extreme nature of the Government’s position here is all too familiar as well. When viewed in its historical context, the Government’s position is part of a pattern whereby the executive branch curtails civil liberties much more than necessary during wartime and seeks to insulate the basis for its actions from any judicial scrutiny.”

“In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, this Court invalidated President Truman’s nationalization of the steel mills during the Korean Conflict, despite the Commander-in-Chief’s insistence that his actions were necessary to maintain production of essential war material. During the Vietnam War, this Court rejected a Government request to enjoin publication of the Pentagon Papers, refusing to defer to executive branch claims that publication of this top-secret document would endanger our troops in the field and undermine ongoing military operations. New York Times Co. v. United States.”

“During World War I, John Lord O’Brian served as Special Assistant Attorney General in charge of the War Emergency Division of the Department of Justice. In this capacity, he played a central role in enforcing the Espionage Act of 1917. Four decades later, reflecting on his own experience, O’Brian cautioned against the ‘emotional excitement engendered…during a war,’ and warned that ‘the greatest danger to our institutions’ may rest, not in the threat of subversion, but ‘in our own weaknesses in yielding’ to wartime anxiety and our ‘readiness to…disregard the fundamental rights of the individual.’ He expressed the hope that ‘our judges will in the end establish principles reaffirming’ our nation’s commitment to civil liberties.

“As Chief Justice Rehnquist has written, ‘[i]t is all too easy to slide from a case of genuine military necessity…to one where the threat is not critical and the power [sought to be exercised is] either dubious or nonexistent.’ It is, he added, ‘both desirable and likely that more careful attention will be paid by the courts to the…government’s claims of necessity as a basis for curtailing civil liberty.’”

6. UK Members of Parliament

Who: “175 Members of both Houses of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

Excerpt: “There is no mechanism in place or being followed to ensure that the circumstances of these detentions meet even the most basic standards of due process or human rights. The rule of law requires reasonable due process to ascertain the bases asserted in support of prolonged detention as well as the veracity of the facts that suppor t those bases. Indefinite detention without charge represents a violent departure from principles underlying our common legal heritage.

“The detention center at Guantanamo was designed, according to the US Administration, to house ‘the worst of the worst’ and ‘hardest of the hardcore.’ Yet, other statements by the administration suggest that Guantanamo holds no high ranking terrorist of any significance.”

7. International Law and Jurisdiction Professors

Who: Four law professors from the US. “All are academic international law experts who have devoted significant attention to the jurisdictional aspects of national and international law in areas such as international criminal law, international economic law, and human rights. Professors Barton and Carter are members of the bar of this Court.”

Excerpts: “The prisoners held at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo are not the only persons who will be affected by the Court’s jurisdictional decision in this case. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, it appears possible that the United States executive will establish its own special criminal court process, seeking to avoid the use of Article III judges and to use instead an executive form of review rather than an independent judicial review, such as that provided by this Court, Military Order of Nov. 13, 2001: Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism. This new process may be applied far beyond those captured in connection with the Afghanistan or Iraq actions, for the war on terrorism is likely to last indefinitely.”

“Moreover, precedents set in this terrorism conflict may end up being applied as well to international narcotics or money-laundering offenses.”

8. Legal Historians

Who: A group of two-dozen legal historians from Harvard, Boston College, Columbia, Oxford, Stanford, Yale, Amherst, Princeton, Georgetown, and other universities.

Excerpt: “In sum, the historical evidence is not consistent with the government’s claim that the writ of habeas corpus guaranteed by the Constitution is unavailable to test even the classification as ‘alien enemies’ of those detained at Guantánamo. Guantánamo lies a mere 90 miles from the United States and has been subject to the exclusive control and jurisdiction of the United States for the past century. No other law but US law operates there. The historical evidence suggests instead that the denial of all habeas corpus review in such a situation would contravene the fundamental principles that have governed the availability and operation of the Great Writ since well before the United States Constitution was adopted.”

9. Bipartisan Coalition of National and International Non-Governmental Organizations

Who: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, American Civil Liberties Union, Anti-Defamation League, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Association of the Bar of the City of New York, National Association of Social Workers (Legal Defense Fund), People For the American Way Foundation, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and seven other legal and religious groups.

Excerpts: “Were the Due Process Clause inapplicable to US actions in Guantanamo Bay, then the Constitution would allow the summary execution or torture of prisoners detained there. Indeed, the government has conceded this in open court. See Gherebi v. Bush, 2003. (‘[A]t oral argument, the government advised us that its position would be the same even if the claims were that it was engaging in acts of torture or that it was summarily executing the detainees. To our knowledge, prior to the current detention of prisoners at Guantanamo, the US government has never before asserted such a grave and startling proposition.’)”

“The US Department of Defense has asserted that the Guantanamo prisoners, nearly all of whose identities have not been officially disclosed, are ‘battlefield’ detainees who were engaged in combat when arrested. But in addition to Petitioners’ claims of non-combatancy,it is clear that some detainees were apprehended far from battlefields. For instance, Guantanamo holds six Bosnians and Algerians who were arrested by Bosnian police in Bosnia and then handed over to US troops at the request of the United States. They were quickly transported to Guantanamo, despite a Bosnian court order that four of the men remain in Bosnia for further proceedings.”

10. International Commission of Jurists

Who: “The ICJ is comprised of 60 jurists [judges, prosecutors, and attorneys] of high standing in their own country or at the international level.”

Excerpts: “If the Court’s interpretation of Johnson v. Eisentrager were correct, US officials could arrest foreign nationals and, by the simple device of transferring such prisoners to a place of detention outside the sovereign territory of the United States, defeat the jurisdiction of the United States Courts to review the legality of their detention. The US Executive could arbitrarily hold such individuals in detention with no accountability to any court of law.”

“There are already disturbing signs that other nations have begun to use the example of the United States to justify arbitrary detention of their citizens. For example, Malaysia’s Law Minister has justified the detention of militants without trial stating that its practice was ‘just like the process at Guantanamo Bay.’ The minister further indicated that he ‘put the equation with Guantanamo Bay just to make it graphic to you that this is not simply a Malaysian style of doing things.’”

11. Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association

Who: “The Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association (the ‘Institute’) is an international body headquartered in London, England, that helps promote, protect and enforce human rights under a just rule of law, and works to preserve the independence of the judiciary and legal profession worldwide. Founded in 1995 under the Honorary Presidency of Nelson Mandela, the Institute now has more than 7,000 members worldwide.”

Excerpt: “Even where the presumption of prisoner of war status is displaced, the [Geneva] Conventions afford due process protection to all detainees, ensuring that they are not held without justification and that any prosecution brought against them accords with fundamental justice. Combatants who are not members of any armed forces or volunteer corps belonging to a party to a conflict have been described as ‘unlawful combatants,’ although no such status is recognized in the Geneva Conventions. If they are not members of the armed forces, they fall within the scope of the Civilian Convention. Accordingly, while unlawful combatants (unlike prisoners of war) may be prosecuted for taking part in the conflict and for any crimes committed in that regard, they are entitled to the judicial guarantees set out within the Civilian Convention should they be prosecuted for their actions.”

12. National Institute of Military Justice

Who: “[A] District of Columbia nonprofit corporation organized in 1991 to advance the fair administration of military justice and to foster improved public understanding of the military justice system.”

Excerpts: “A well-developed body of law regarding individuals seized during hostilities has been enforced regularly by impartial tribunals in past conflicts, and is being applied today by United States armed forces in combat. The application of the rule of law to individuals seized during hostilities is not inconsistent with the Executive Branch’s exercise of its war powers, either in theory or in the practice of the United States over the past fifty years. Nor is there anything novel about issuing a writ of habeas corpus on the application of an individual confined by the military at Guantanamo Bay, something the highest court of the military did in Burtt v. Schick, 23 M.J. 140 (1986).”

“Domestic law and practice thus make it clear that Guantanamo Bay has never been regarded by the United States as a ‘law-free’ zone. United States courts exercise criminal jurisdiction over both citizens and aliens at Guantanamo Bay. In connection with the detainees currently interned at Guantanamo Bay, the United States has already asserted jurisdiction over an Army chaplain, two translators, and an intelligence officer. Judicial resolution of charges against those individuals has not troubled the Government, which is according rights to everyone except the detainees themselves.

“While the Government devotes much attention to the supposed unavailability of habeas corpus in Guantanamo Bay, no such jurisdictional difficulty was found by the court with responsibility for the military justice system. In Burtt v. Schick, a Navy enlisted man confined at Guantanamo Bay sought a writ of habeas corpus after the prosecution had obtained a mistrial over his objection. Holding that the mistrial had been obtained without either ‘manifest necessity,’ or the consent of the accused, the Court of Military Appeals unanimously granted the writ against the officer-in-charge of the Guantanamo Bay brig. In doing so, it found no obstacle to asserting habeas corpus jurisdiction over individuals at Guantanamo Bay.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross provided US diplomats in 2005 with evidence of the systematic use of torture by Indian security forces in Kashmir, leaked US diplomatic cables revealed Friday.

In a confidential briefing, the ICRC told the diplomats of 177 visits it had made to detention centres in Indian Kashmir that revealed “stable trend lines” of prisoner abuses, according to the cables released by website WikiLeaks.

Techniques included electric shock treatment, sexual and water torture and nearly 300 cases of “roller” abuse in which a round metal object is placed on the thighs of a sitting detainee and then sat on by guards to crush the muscles.

The ICRC said it had been “forced to conclude that the (Indian government) condones torture,” the cables said.

Human rights groups have repeatedly accused India of abuses in Muslim-majority Indian Kashmir, where it has been fighting an armed separatist insurgency for more than 20 years.

The ICRC, which met with nearly 1,500 detainees, stressed that very few were militants. The vast majority were civilians “connected to or believed to have information about the insurgency”.

Read more here.

An Italian court on Wednesday upped the sentences for 23 CIA agents convicted in absentia of abducting an Egyptian imam in one of the biggest cases against the US “extraordinary rendition” program.

The 23 CIA agents, originally sentenced in November 2009 to five to eight years in prison, had their sentences increased to seven to nine years on appeal in what one of the defence lawyers described as a “shocking blow” for the US.

They were also ordered to pay 1.5 million euros (2.0 million dollars) in damages to the imam and his wife for the 2003 abduction.

Washington has refused to extradite the agents, who all remain at liberty but now risk arrest if they travel to Europe.

Osama Mustafa Hassan, a radical Islamist opposition figure better known as Abu Omar, was snatched from a street in Milan in 2003 in an operation coordinated by the CIA and the Italian military intelligence agency SISMI.

Abu Omar, who enjoyed political asylum in Italy, was then allegedly taken to the Aviano US air base in northeastern Italy, then flown to a US base in Germany, and on to Cairo, where he says he was tortured.

Among the defendants sentenced on Wednesday was Bob Seldon Lady, former head of the CIA station in Milan, whose sentence was increased to nine years from eight. The other 22 agents had their sentences upped from five to seven years.

Guido Meroni, a defence lawyer for six of the 23 agents, said he believed the sentences had been increased because the court had rejected the mitigating circumstances that had led to the original judgement.

“The judges had originally ruled they had just been following orders, but it seems the court of appeals didn’t agree,” he told AFP.

Just following orders…  That sounds familiar.  Read more here.

Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months — and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait — under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture.

Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning’s detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries.

Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems. He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a “Maximum Custody Detainee,” the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on him.

From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day — for seven straight months and counting — he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he’s barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he’s being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs. Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not “like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole,” but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.

In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America’s Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything. And as is true of many prisoners subjected to warped treatment of this sort, the brig’s medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.

Just by itself, the type of prolonged solitary confinement to which Manning has been subjected for many months is widely viewed around the world as highly injurious, inhumane, punitive, and arguably even a form of torture. In his widely praised March, 2009 New Yorker article — entitled “Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture?” — the surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande assembled expert opinion and personal anecdotes to demonstrate that, as he put it, “all human beings experience isolation as torture.” By itself, prolonged solitary confinement routinely destroys a person’s mind and drives them into insanity. A March, 2010 article in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law explains that “solitary confinement is recognized as difficult to withstand; indeed, psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture.”

Manning is barred from communicating with any reporters, even indirectly, so nothing he has said can be quoted here. But David House, a 23-year-old MIT researcher who befriended Manning after his detention (and then had his laptops, camera and cellphone seized by Homeland Security when entering the U.S.) is one of the few people to have visited Manning several times at Quantico. He describes palpable changes in Manning’s physical appearance and behavior just over the course of the several months that he’s been visiting him. Like most individuals held in severe isolation, Manning sleeps much of the day, is particularly frustrated by the petty, vindictive denial of a pillow or sheets, and suffers from less and less outdoor time as part of his one-hour daily removal from his cage.

The plight of Manning has largely been overshadowed by the intense media fixation on WikiLeaks, so it’s worth underscoring what it is that he’s accused of doing and what he said in his own reputed words about these acts. If one believes the authenticity of the highly edited chat logs of Manning’s online conversations with Adrian Lamo that have been released by Wired (that magazine inexcusably continues to conceal large portions of those logs), Manning clearly believed that he was a whistle-blower acting with the noblest of motives, and probably was exactly that. If, for instance, he really is the leaker of the Apache helicopter attack video — a video which sparked very rare and much-needed realization about the visceral truth of what American wars actually entail — as well as the war and diplomatic cables revealing substantial government deceit, brutality, illegality and corruption, then he’s quite similar to Daniel Ellsberg.

To see why that’s so, just recall some of what Manning purportedly said about why he chose to leak, at least as reflected in the edited chat logs published by Wired:

Lamo: what’s your endgame plan, then?. . .

Manning: well, it was forwarded to [WikiLeaks] – and god knows what happens now – hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms – if not, than [sic] we’re doomed – as a species – i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens – the reaction to the video gave me immense hope; CNN’s iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded – people who saw, knew there was something wrong . . . Washington Post sat on the video… David Finkel acquired a copy while embedded out here. . . . – i want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

if i knew then, what i knew now – kind of thing, or maybe im just young, naive, and stupid . . . im hoping for the former – it cant be the latter – because if it is… were fucking screwed (as a society) – and i dont want to believe that we’re screwed.

Manning described the incident which first made him seriously question the U.S. Government: when he was instructed to work on the case of Iraqi “insurgents” who had been detained for distributing so-called “insurgent” literature which, when Manning had it translated, turned out to be nothing more than “a scholarly critique against PM Maliki”:

i had an interpreter read it for me… and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled “Where did the money go?” and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet… i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees…

i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth… but that was a point where i was a *part* of something… i was actively involved in something that i was completely against…

And Manning explained why he never considered the thought of selling this classified information to a foreign nation for substantial profit or even just secretly transmitting it to foreign powers, as he easily could have done:

Manning: i mean what if i were someone more malicious- i could’ve sold to russia or china, and made bank?

Lamo: why didn’t you?

Manning: because it’s public data

Lamo: i mean, the cables

Manning: it belongs in the public domain -information should be free – it belongs in the public domain – because another state would just take advantage of the information… try and get some edge – if its out in the open… it should be a public good.

That’s a whistleblower in the purest and most noble form: discovering government secrets of criminal and corrupt acts and then publicizing them to the world not for profit, not to give other nations an edge, but to trigger “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.” Given how much Manning has been demonized — at the same time that he’s been rendered silent by the ban on his communication with any media — it’s worthwhile to keep all of that in mind.

But ultimately, what one thinks of Manning’s alleged acts is irrelevant to the issue here. The U.S. ought at least to abide by minimal standards of humane treatment in how it detains him. That’s true for every prisoner, at all times. But departures from such standards are particularly egregious where, as here, the detainee has merely been accused, but never convicted, of wrongdoing. These inhumane conditions make a mockery of Barack Obama’s repeated pledge to end detainee abuse and torture, as prolonged isolation — exacerbated by these other deprivations — is at least as damaging, as violative of international legal standards, and almost as reviled around the world, as the waterboard, hypothermia and other Bush-era tactics that caused so much controversy.

What all of this achieves is clear. Having it known that the U.S. could and would disappear people at will to “black sites,” assassinate them with unseen drones, imprison them for years without a shred of due process even while knowing they were innocent, torture them mercilessly, and in general acts as a lawless and rogue imperial power created a climate of severe intimidation and fear. Who would want to challenge the U.S. Government in any way — even in legitimate ways — knowing that it could and would engage in such lawless, violent conduct without any restraints or repercussions?

That is plainly what is going on here. Anyone remotely affiliated with WikiLeaks, including American citizens (and plenty of other government critics), has their property seized and communications stored at the border without so much as a warrant. Julian Assange — despite never having been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime — has now spent more than a week in solitary confinement with severe restrictions under what his lawyer calls “Dickensian conditions.” But Bradley Manning has suffered much worse, and not for a week, but for seven months, with no end in sight. If you became aware of secret information revealing serious wrongdoing, deceit and/or criminality on the part of the U.S. Government, would you — knowing that you could and likely would be imprisoned under these kinds of repressive, torturous conditions for months on end without so much as a trial: just locked away by yourself 23 hours a day without recourse — be willing to expose it? That’s the climate of fear and intimidation which these inhumane detention conditions are intended to create.

Over the Christmas-New Year’s holiday in 2003, Khaled El-Masri traveled by bus to Skopje, Macedonia. There he was apprehended by border guards who noted the similarity of his name to that of Khalid al-Masri, an Al Qaeda agent linked to the Hamburg cell where the 9/11 attacks were plotted. Despite El-Masri’s protests that he was not al-Masri, he was beaten, stripped naked, shot full of drugs, given an enema and a diaper, and flown first to Baghdad and then to the notorious “salt pit,” the CIA’s secret interrogation facility in Afghanistan.

At the salt pit, he was repeatedly beaten, drugged, and subjected to a strange food regime that he supposed was part of an experiment that his captors were performing on him. Throughout this time, El-Masri insisted that he had been falsely imprisoned, and the CIA slowly established that he was who he claimed to be. Over many further weeks of bickering over what to do, a number of CIA figures apparently argued that, though innocent, the best course was to continue to hold him incommunicado because he “knew too much.”

Dana Priest furnished the core of this account in an excellent 2005 Washington Post story. Other aspects have been slowly confirmed by German criminal investigators. By studying El-Masri’s hair and skin samples, for instance, they were able to confirm allegations that he was drugged and subjected to a bizarre starvation regimen. Throughout this process, El-Masri’s account of what transpired, part of which he wrote up as an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, has consistently been vindicated.

Read more here.

In Spain, the WikiLeaks disclosures have dominated the news for three days now. The reporting has been led by the level-headed El País, with its nationwide competitor, Público, lagging only a bit behind. Attention has focused on three separate matters, each pending in the Spanish national security court, the Audiencia Nacional: the investigation into the 2003 death of a Spanish cameraman, José Cuoso, as a result of the mistaken shelling of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel by a U.S. tank; an investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; and a probe into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for extraordinary renditions flights, including the one which took Khaled El-Masri to Baghdad and then on to Afghanistan in 2003.

These cables reveal a large-scale, closely coordinated effort by the State Department to obstruct these criminal investigations. High-ranking U.S. visitors such as former Republican Party Chair Mel Martinez, Senator Judd Gregg, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were corralled into this effort, warning Spanish political leaders that the criminal investigations would “be misunderstood” and would harm bilateral relations. The U.S. diplomats also sought out and communicated directly with judges and prosecutors, attempting to steer the cases into the hands of judges of their choosing. The cables also reflect an absolutely extraordinary rapport between the Madrid embassy and Spanish prosecutors, who repeatedly appear to be doing the embassy’s bidding.

Read more here.

The US military administered the drug despite Pentagon knowledge that mefloquine caused severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including suicidal thoughts, hallucinations and anxiety. The drug was used on the prisoners whether they had malaria or not.

The revelation, which has not been previously reported, was buried in documents publicly released by the Defense Department (DoD) two years ago as part of the government’s investigation into the June 2006 deaths of three Guantanamo detainees.

Army Staff Sgt. Joe Hickman, who was stationed at Guantanamo at the time of the suicides in 2006, and has presented evidence that demonstrates the three detainees could not have died by hanging themselves, noticed in the detainees’ medical files that they were given mefloquine. Hickman has been investigating the circumstances behind the detainees’ deaths for nearly four years.

Interviews conducted over the past two months with tropical disease experts and a review of Defense Department documents and peer-reviewed journals show there were no preexisting cases where mefloquine was ever prescribed for mass presumptive treatment of malaria.