NORTH CAROLINA
STOP TORTURE
NOW
PO Box 50345
Raleigh, NC 27650
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contact AT ncstoptorturenow.net
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RECENT NEWS & HEADLINES
Just Like NC Officials, Pelosi Knew About Torture -- Did Nothing
Obama Revives Military Commissions
New York Times - Spanish Prosecution of U.S. War Criminals Continues.
CBS: President Obama Admits Torture Compromises Security; Hasn't Ended Disappearance, Extraordinary Rendition or Preventative Detention.
New York Times - Mark Danner: International Committee of the Red Cross Describes Mistreatment and Torture of CIA Detainees.
***
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is almost daily revising a narrative about when and how much she knew about the previous administration's use of torture.
Pelosi's early attempts by the Democratic leader to refocus criticism for failed leadership on the CIA have backfired, with the new administration's spy diretor leaping to the agency's defense.
Will North Carolina's Congressional leaders, the state Attorney General and the Johnston County Board of Commissioners also try to pretend they are shocked to learn a local air charter ferried innocent men to torture?
***
Obama Revives Military Commissions - Puts Lipstick on a Pig
President Obama has reseurrected a system of kangaroo courts he once labeled "an enormous failure," to try men "captured on the battefield in Afghanistan," sold to the CIA for bounty by tribal warlords, or accepted as an appeasement to the nation's biggest creditor - the People's Republic of China.
The President contends, in news reports from the United Kingdom, that:
"This is the best way to protect our country, while upholding our deeply held values."
Obama has promised the system will be improved from earlier incarnations, and that evidence gathered through torture will be inadmissable.
But, Zachary Katznelson, legal director of Reprieve, the British-based legal action charity, said the changes to the system would do little to improve them.
"After years of working with these bizarre commissions, it is clear to us that they simply do not work," he said. "And unfortunately, the changes the Obama administration has proposed do not begin to address their failings.
"As a constitutional lawyer, Obama must know he can put lipstick on this pig – but it will always be a pig."
The decision follows a string of broken promises by the administration including -- most recently -- the President's decision to withhold photographs of torture victims.
Concurrent the April 17 release of memoranda authorizing the use of torture by CIA operatives, President Obama noted that:
"While I believe strongly in transparency and accountability, I also believe that in a dangerous world, the United States must sometimes carry out intelligence operations and protect information that is classified for purposes of national security. I have already fought for that principle in court and will do so again in the future."
Yet, the president continues:
"In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution."
And, he concludes:
"The United States is a nation of laws. My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals. That is why we have released these memos, and that is why we have taken steps to ensure that the actions described within them never take place again."
Amnesty International USA offers a simple response to include in your letters to the President, Attorney General Holder, and members of the North Carolina Congressional delegation:
"Laws have been broken and fundamental human rights have been abused. The Attorney General said that the Obama administration does not condone torture, but by refusing to investigate the coercive interrogation program used by the CIA, that is precisely what he and the president are doing.
The American people deserve an independent commission to shed light on abuses committed in their name."
Not only do the American people deserve an honest examination of these abuses, the course of our future depends on it, as msnbc.com journalist Keith Olbermann clearly explains.
Moreover, the families of the men and childredn who are victims and survivors of torture and extraordinary rendition -- Khaled El-Masri, Binyam Mohamed, Moazzam Begg, Maher Arar, Bisher el-Rawi, Ahmed Agiza, to name a few -- deserve meaningful access to restorative justice.
***
Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, will will pursue a criminal investigation into the actions of six Bush administration lawyers for providing legal cover for torture - despite a recommendation from the Spanish attonrey general that the case not go forward.
The New York Times characterized the attorney general's intervention in the case as unusual, since his position overruled prosecutors at the Madrid court dealing with a complaint which alleges six high officials in the Bush administration share responsibility for the torture of five former Guantánamo inmates, three Spanish citizens and two Spanish residents.
Named in the complaint are: Alberto Gonzalez, John C. Yoo, Douglas J. Feith, William J. Haynes II, Jay S. Bybee, and David S. Addington.
But, the Spanish attorney general argues that any investigation should focus on those who actually mistreated detainees.
Too, the attorney general's action is not decisive, as an investigating judge decides whether a case will proceed. The judge handling the complaint against the Americans is Baltasar Garzón, the crusading magistrate who ordered the arrest of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
The attorney general's reluctance contradicts earlier guidance from prosecutors who advised the investigating judge that Spain could claim jurisdiction in the case because it was a party to the United Nations' Convention Against Torture.
***
From the 60 Minutes Interview of
President Obama, March 22 ...
STEVE KROFT: One question about Dick Cheney and Guantanamo. I'm sure you want to answer this.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Oh, absolutely.
STEVE KROFT: A week ago Vice President Cheney-- said essentially that your willingness to shut down Guantanamo and to change the way prisoners are treated and interrogator-- interrogated-- was making America weaker and more vulnerable to another attack. And that-- the interrogation techniques that were used at Guantanamo were essential in preventing another attack against the United States.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney. Not surprisingly. You know, I think that-- Vice President Cheney has been-- at the head of a-- movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the l-- wrong lesson from history.
The facts don't bear him out. I think he is-- that attitude, that philosophy has done incredible damage-- to our image and position in the world. I mean, the fact of the matter is after all these years how many convictions actually came out of Guantanamo? How many-- how many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment. Which means that there is constant effective recruitment of-- Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the world.
STEVE KROFT: Some of it being organized by a few people who were released from Guantanamo.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well there is no doubt that-- we have not done a particularly effective job in sorting through who are truly dangerous individuals that we've got to-- make sure are not a threat to us, who are folks that we just swept up. The whole premise of Guantanamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that somehow the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists.
I fundamentally disagree with that. Now-- do these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter-- down the block? Of course not.
STEVE KROFT: What do you do with those people?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think we're going to have to figure out a mechanism to make sure that they not released and do us harm. But-- do so in a way that is consistent with both our traditions, sense of due process, international law. But this is-- this is the legacy that's been left behind. And, you know, I'm surprised that-- the Vice President is eager-- to defend-- a legacy that was unsustainable.
Let's assume that we didn't change these practices. How-- how long are we going to go? Are we going to just keep on going until-- you know, the entire Muslim world and Arab world-- despises us? Do we think that's really going to make us safer? I-- I don't know-- a lot of thoughtful thinkers, liberal or conservative-- who think that that was the right approach.
***
New York Times - Mark Danner: "Tales From Torture’s Dark World" Reveals Content of International Committee of the Red Cross Report on U.S. Abuse of Captives
The New York Times ran an opinion item, March 15, based on reporting by Mark Danner.
The piece, includes items from a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross that describe "the treatment and material conditions of detention" for 14 men characterized as particularly high-value detainees during captivity lasting anywhere “from 16 months to almost four and a half years.”
Danner draws this information from the report:
Beginning with the chapter headings on its contents page — “suffocation by water,” “prolonged stress standing,” “beatings by use of a collar,” “confinement in a box” — the document makes compelling and chilling reading. The stories recounted in its fewer than 50 pages lead inexorably to this unequivocal conclusion, which, given its source, has the power of a legal determination: “The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
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FIND OUT WHERE WE'VE BEEN SO FAR, AN INCOMPLETE CHRONOLOGY OF NCSTN EFFORTS
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updated 17 May 2009, JMcI
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