SCOTUS rules FOR detainees at Gitmo
June 12, 2008 by Dusty · Leave a Comment
In a ruling that is sure to send shivers down the spine of every loyal Bushie, The Supremes ruled this morning that detainees at Guantanamo have the right to appeal to US civilian courts. From the MSNBC writeup:
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.
In its third rebuke of the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court’s liberal justices were in the majority.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”
For once they got it right..the Constitution must survive even the attacks on it from within. Justice Kennedy, was the swing vote, I would bet my last devalued dollar on it. A key piece of the ruling from Slates Deborah Perlstein:
The Government argues petitioners must seek review of their CSRT determinations in the Court of Appeals before they can proceed with their habeas corpus actions in the District Court. As noted earlier, in other contexts and for prudential reasons this Court has required exhaustion of alternative remedies before a prisoner can seek federal habeas relief. … The cases before us, however, do not involve detainees who have been held for a short period of time. … Were that the case, or were it probable that the Court of Appeals could complete a prompt review of their applications, the case for requiring temporary abstention or exhaustion of alternative remedies would be much stronger. These qualifications no longer pertain here. In some of these cases six years have elapsed without the judicial oversight that habeas corpus or an adequate substitute demands. And there has been no showing that the Executive faces such onerous burdens that it cannot respond to habeas corpus actions. To require these detainees to complete [MCA] review before proceeding with their habeas corpus actions would be to require additional months, if not years, of delay. The first [MCA] review applications were filed over a year ago, but no decisions on the merits have been issued. While some delay in fashioning new procedures is unavoidable, the costs of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody. The detainees in these cases are entitled to a prompt habeas corpus hearing.
Prompt? With BushCo still leading the charge? I doubt that.. Read the entire ruling here.
Crossposted at LeftwingNutjob and Bring it On!
Gitmo doubling amount of lawyers.
June 10, 2008 by Dusty · Leave a Comment
From Jurist:
The Pentagon has said that an additional 108 military lawyers and paralegals will be assigned to work on the cases of prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay, twice the current number. Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, legal advisor to the Office of Military Commissions, made the announcement last Thursday, the same day as five men charged with plotting the Sept. 11 attacks were arraigned. Before a military commission at Guantanamo bay, a critical move in the legal proceedings against some of the 19 detainees awaiting trial.
Hartmann said that the additional lawyers will ensure fair trials, but critics argue that the allocation of additional resources is political, designed to finish the commissions before the November elections and to avoid the possible result of a Supreme Court ruling expected later this month on whether federal courts may consider the legality of Guantanamo detentions. Hartmann himself was recently disqualified by a US military judge from participating in the trial of Guantanamo detainee Salim Hamdan because he was deemed too closely associated with the prosecution. Reuters has more. American Forces Press Service has additional coverage.
“We can’t have acquittals. We’ve got to have convictions.”
May 16, 2008 by Dusty · Leave a Comment
I have shuddered at the thought that most, if not all, of the individuals to be tried in BushCo’s kangaroo court known as the military tribunals would be found guilty. That they would be found guilty on shoddy or non-existing evidence coerced out of them by torture and certainly without any decent representation.
Great gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands has occurred on this topic for me. This might cause some folks to see me as a loony lefty, among other things. As if that matters to me what people think of me.
I want the guilty to be found guilty…but I doubt that even a third of the people still being held in Gitmo are guilty of anything, even though they are considered ‘high value’ detainees by the people in charge.
Recently, one of those high-value guys saw the case against him dismissed. The alleged 20th hijacker, Mohammed al-Qahtani’s case came to an abrupt end. The reason? He was tortured and tortured…and tortured some more. As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick notes:
The decision not to try him comes from the convening authority for the commissions, Susan Crawford. She didn’t give an explanation for halting the prosecution, but, then, we don’t really need one.
Even the head of the Joint Chiefs says to close Gitmo..
January 13, 2008 by Dusty · Leave a Comment
Sadly his reasons are shallow. Not because of what has been done there in our name, but because it makes us look bad around the world.
AP has this:
By ROBERT BURNS
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - The chief of the U.S. military said Sunday he favors closing the prison here as soon as possible because he believes negative publicity worldwide about treatment of terrorist suspects has been “pretty damaging” to the image of the United States.
“I’d like to see it shut down,” Adm. Mike Mullen said in an interview with three reporters who toured the detention center with him on his first visit since becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last October.
Damn skippy Mikey. We look like fucking barbarians. And we are..And I am SO damn tired of all the lipservice we get from fuckwits like you about actually doing something about it.
Solidarity against Gitmo
January 6, 2008 by Fran · 3 Comments
“They’re living in the tropics… They’ve got everything they could possibly want.”
- Dick Cheney
Torture and indefinite detention are shamefully un-American, inhumane, unconscionable.
WEAR ORANGE January 11 and protest the shame that is Guantánamo Bay.
To me, the guantanamo prison is an especially low spot in US history. What would be the need to have a prison housed in another country, that does not follow our own laws of due process, other than to circumvent the law? Denying Habeus Corpus rights- to even present the reason why a prisoner is in jail– what they are charged with. The US has not declared war in Iraq, and calls the prisoners “detainees”, so that they don’t have to follow prisoner of war protocol. We don’t even know the extent of abuse & torture that goes on there.
Enough!
JANUARY 11, 2008, is the six-year anniversary of the first arrival of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.
On January 11, we are calling on everyone opposed to torture and indefinite detention to WEAR ORANGE to symbolize their sadness and disgust with the national shame that is Guantánamo Bay.
January 11, 2008 will mark six years since the first 20 prisoners arrived at Guantánamo Bay Cuba. Since then, 775 prisoners have passed through the gates and no trials have been completed.
Rendition and torture, it’s the American way?
November 30, 2007 by Dusty · Leave a Comment
The European newspaper, the TimesOnline had an interesting article this past Sunday. What bothers me that I can’t find anything similar in the US media. I googled the main phrase ‘flight logs, cia’ and only got the European write-ups, with the exception of a two-year old CommonDreams article reprinted from a French news media outlet. Pathetic wouldn’t you say?
Back to the Times article, which is the second write-up they have done on the CIA’s rendition of individuals. The second paragraph caught my attention:
Despite widespread criticism of alleged human rights abuses and torture at the US base in Cuba, a Sunday Times investigation has shown that at least five European countries gave the United States permission to fly nearly 700 terrorist suspects across their territory. (emphasis mine)
Seven Hundred suspects is quite the load of terrorists isn’t it? Considering the fact that over 400 prisoners have been released over the last few years from Gitmo, more than half the total number incarcerated since the opening days of the war on terror, it gives one pause to think about how many of the secretly kidnapped suspects never made it to Gitmo and what actually happened to them…but I digress.
A connection-based pondering…
November 11, 2007 by Angry Black Bitch · 1 Comment
Another spot-fucking-on musing from The Angry Black Bitch. Please visit her blog here and show her some love-Dusty
A connection-based pondering…
Longtime readers know that a bitch adores connecting all manner of shit, so when I read about the release of Iranians who were being detained in Iraq my brain immediately began to connect like connecting is going out of bitness.
I’ve been wondering about the fate of Iranians detained in Iraq for some time. Their initial detention was covered heavily, but then all the media attention kind of died down.
Well the United States military released some nine Iranians from detention, some who had been held for years without being charged or tried…which made me ponder the broader issue of detaining people without trial.
Not just people being held at Gitmo…but the 25,800 Iraqis waiting to face charges or be given freedom being detained by the United States in Iraq. About 17,000 of those were captured this year which leaves more than 8,000 people who have been held without trial or charges for over a year.
That shit is disturbing enough, since we should be leading by example…and detaining people without charges or trial is not an example of democracy in action (wince)…but it’s even more disturbing given what we learned during the recent hearings featuring the CEO of Yahoo.
During the hearings Yahoo apologized to the family of a Chinese man who was arrested after Yahoo turned his e-mail information over to the Chinese government. He was arrested, charged and sentenced to jail because Yahoo wanted to kiss the ass of the world’s fastest growing economy.
And that shit made me think of AT&T and how they supplied the United States government with data about American citizens.
