Motion To Dismiss Charges In Kangaroo Court At US Torture Prison At Guantanamo Bay Based On Unlawful Influence By G.W. Bush And Obama

WASHINGTON, DC – Defense lawyers in the Sept. 11 case at Guantanamo are seeking the testimony of former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama in a motion to dismiss charges, according to a legal motion released Wednesday.

Lawyers for three of the five defendants charged with planning and helping carry out the attacks say the charges should be dismissed because Bush, Obama and other top officials have made many statements that could influence potential jurors in their eventual trial before a special tribunal known as a military commission, according to the motion.

They have exerted what is known as “unlawful influence,” over the case with such statements as calling the defendants “terrorists,” and saying they must be brought to justice, the lawyers argue.

“Under these facts, it is impossible for any objective, disinterested observer, with knowledge of all the facts and circumstances, to believe these men can receive a fair trial by military commission,” they wrote.

Also among those called to testify are Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who has been active in detainee policy, as well as several Pentagon officials.

The motion was filed May 11 but was only just released on a Pentagon website following a security review. It will be up to the military judge to decide whether to call any of the witnesses to the stand at the U.S. base in Cuba and such an outcome would seem unlikely. The judge may just require written briefs in what is one of many pretrial motions pending in the case.

Prosecutors have not filed a response.

The five defendants, including the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were arraigned at Guantanamo on May 5 on charges that include terrorism and murder. They could get the death penalty if convicted.

The brief was submitted by the defense lawyers for three of the men: Ramzi Binalshibh of Yemen; Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi of Saudi Arabia; and Pakistani national Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali.

A prohibition on improper influence is an important tenet of the military justice system, intended to prevent higher ranking officers from attempting to sway a case being tried by people over whom they have command.

“For the past 10 years, through the administrations of two presidents, these accused have consistently been described as ‘thugs,’ ‘murderers’ and ‘terrorists’ who ‘planned the 9/11 attacks’ and must ‘face justice,'” the lawyers wrote. “It can easily be understood by members of the public that this system of military commissions exists solely for the purpose of imposing a death sentence upon these accused.”

Appeared Here

After Years Of Brutal Torture And Mistreatment At Hands Of US Government, 5 Alleged Terrorists Being Tried In Kangaroo Court System Rigged To Prevent Defense Lawyers From Doing Their Jobs

WASHINGTON, DC – Silence and occasional outbursts from accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others during their arraignment were signs of “peaceful resistance to an unjust system,” an attorney representing one of the men said Sunday.

“These men have endured years of inhumane treatment and torture,” James Connell, who is representing defendant Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, told reporters at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. naval base where the men are being tried before a military court.

Connell’s comments came after a 13-hour court session on Saturday — the first appearance in a military courtroom for Mohammed and four others since charges were re-filed against them in connection with the September 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The hearing, which wrapped just before 10:30 p.m., offered a rare glimpse of the five men who have not been seen publicly since January 2009, when they were first charged by a military tribunal. Mohammed, Ali and the others — Walid Muhammad Salih, Mubarak bin ‘Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi — appeared to work together to defy the judge’s instructions, refusing to speak or cooperate with courtroom protocol.

On Sunday, attorneys representing them told reporters that the proceedings had been unfair to their clients. Prosecutors were expected to speak to reporters later Sunday.

“We are hamstrung … before we ever start,” said David Nevin, who is representing Mohammed. “The system is a rigged game to prevent us from doing our jobs.”

The silence from the defendants — some of whom ignored the judge, while others appeared to be reading — slowed the proceedings to a crawl.

Bin ‘Attash was wheeled into the courtroom in a restraining chair. It was unclear why he was the only defendant brought into court in that manner, though he was allowed out of restraints after he promised not to disrupt court proceedings. Toward the end of the day, he took off his shirt while his attorney was describing injuries she alleged he sustained while in custody.

The judge told bin ‘Attash, “No!” and warned that he would be removed from the courtroom if he did not follow directions.

At one point, bin ‘Attash made a paper airplane and placed it on top of a microphone. It was removed after a translator complained about the sound the paper made against the microphone.

The judge, Col. James Pohl, needed the five to vocally confirm their desire to be represented by the attorneys who accompanied them to court. Because the defendants refused to cooperate, Pohl ruled the men would continue to be represented by their current military and civilian attorneys.

All five men are charged with terrorism, hijacking aircraft, conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury and destruction of property in violation of the law of war.

If convicted, they face the death penalty.

There were so many allegations behind the charges, it took more than two hours for officers of the court just to read into the record the details of the 9/11 hijackings.

Earlier, the refusal of the defendants to speak caused an issue with the court translations.

Mohammed’s lawyer said that his client “will decline to communicate with the court.”

Because the men wouldn’t speak, the judge could not confirm that they could hear the translation of the proceedings. Time elapsed while they set up loudspeakers in the court to carry the translations. Some lawyers objected to this solution, too, and translation remained a problem at the outset of the hearing.

Pohl said he would enter a not guilty plea on Mohammed’s behalf, if he refused to enter a plea. Later, the five men chose to defer entering a plea, a routine practice during military court proceedings.

The next hearing is scheduled for June 12. It will likely be at least a year before the case goes to trial, Pohl said.

Hours into Saturday’s proceeding, one of the defendants broke his silence with an outburst.

Binalshibh shouted in heavily accented English: “You may not see us anymore,” he said. “They are going to kill us.”

During recesses, the five men talked amongst each other and appeared relaxed. They passed around a copy of The Economist.

Binalshibh appeared to lead the group twice in prayer in the courtroom, once delaying the resumption of the hearing.

Mohammed, whose long beard appeared to be dyed red by henna, was much thinner than the last time he was seen publicly in a courtroom.

He also appeared much smaller and paler than the man the world came to know through photos released after his capture in March 2003 in Pakistan.

The charges allege that the five are “responsible for the planning and execution of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa., resulting in the killing of 2,976 people,” the Defense Department said.

The military initially charged Mohammed in 2008, but President Barack Obama stopped the case as part of his effort to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. naval base in Cuba.

Unable to close the center, Obama attempted to move the case to federal court in New York in 2009, only to run into a political firestorm. The plan was dropped after complaints about cost and security.

Last April, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the five would face a military trial at Guantanamo Bay.

The decision was met with some criticism, including from the American Civil Liberties Union.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said last month that the administration is making a “terrible mistake by prosecuting the most important terrorism trials of our time in a second-tier system of justice.”

Appeared Here

Memoir Published By Former CIA Counterterrorism Chief Says Rep. Nancy Pelosi Lied, Saying She Had Not Been Briefed About USA’s Waterboarding Torture Technique

WASHINGTON, DC – In an explosive memoir released today, former CIA counterterrorism chief Jose Rodriguez provides new evidence that Rep. Nancy Pelosi lied when she declared she had not been briefed about the use of waterboarding.

Recall that in a Capitol Hill news conference three years ago, Pelosi (D-Calif.) vehemently denied being told about the use of waterboarding at a CIA briefing in September 2002. “We were not — I repeat — were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used,” Pelosi said. She later changed her story, telling reporters, “We were told explicitly that waterboarding was not being used.” She claimed she learned about the use of waterboarding the following year, only after other lawmakers were told by the CIA. “I wasn’t briefed, I was informed that somebody else had been briefed about it,” she said.

If Rodriguez is right, each of these statements is false. But other than a chart released by the CIA noting that Pelosi, then the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, and Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), then chairman of the committee, had been given a “description of the particular [enhanced interrogation techniques] that had been employed,” there was little public evidence to contradict Pelosi’s claims. So she got away with it — until today.

In his new book, “Hard Measures,” Rodriguez reveals that he led a CIA briefing of Pelosi, where the techniques being used in the interrogation of senior al-Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaida were described in detail. Her claim that she was not told about waterboarding at that briefing, he writes, “is untrue.”

“We explained that as a result of the techniques, Abu Zubaydah was compliant and providing good intelligence. We made crystal clear that authorized techniques, including waterboarding, had by then been used on Zubaydah.” Rodriguez writes that he told Pelosi everything, adding, “We held back nothing.”

How did she respond when presented with this information? Rodriguez writes that neither Pelosi nor anyone else in the briefing objected to the techniques being used. Indeed, he notes, when one member of his team described another technique that had been considered but not authorized or used, “Pelosi piped up immediately and said that in her view, use of that technique (which I will not describe) would have been ‘wrong.’ ” She raised no such concern about waterboarding, he writes. “Since she felt free to label one considered-and-rejected technique as wrong,” Rodriguez adds, “we went away with the clear impression that she harbored no such feelings about the ten tactics [including waterboarding] that we told her were in use.”

So we’re left with a “he said-she said” standoff? Not at all. Rodriguez writes that there’s contemporaneous evidence to back his account of the briefing. Six days after the meeting took place, Rodriguez reveals, “a cable went out from headquarters to the black site informing them that the briefing for the House leadership had taken place.” He explains that “[t]he cable to the field made clear that Goss and Pelosi had been briefed on the state of AZ’s interrogation, specifically including the use of the waterboard and other enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Rodriguez asks, “So Pelosi was another member of Congress reinventing the truth. What’s the big deal?” The big deal, he explains, is “the message they are sending to the men and women of the intelligence community who to this day are being asked to undertake dangerous and sometimes controversial actions on behalf of their government. They are told that the administration and Congress ‘have their back.’ You will forgive CIA officers if they are not filled with confidence.”

Rodriguez compares Pelosi’s actions to the opening scene of the old TV series “Mission: Impossible,” “in which the operatives were told that if anything went wrong, their leaders would ‘disavow any knowledge of your actions.’ That is not how it should work in the real world,” he writes.

It is a big deal for another reason. If Rodriguez is right, it means that Pelosi stood up in a Capitol Hill news conference and lied with a straight face to the American people; that she falsely accused a dedicated civil servant of lying to Congress as part of a political cover-up. Pelosi is hoping to become House speaker again after the November elections. Do we really want someone so ethically challenged to be third in line to the presidency?

There is a simple way to settle this once and for all. Pelosi should formally request that the Obama administration declassify the cable that was sent from headquarters to the field reporting on the details of her Sept. 4, 2002, briefing. If she refuses to do so, it should be taken as an admission by Pelosi that her account of events is a fabrication.

Appeared Here

Widespread Abuse Of Illegal Immigrants By U.S. Border Patrol Agents – Beatings, Denied Food And Water, Death Threats, Torture, Etc.

WASHINGTON, DC – Back in 2006, volunteers with No More Deaths, a humanitarian organization dedicated to helping migrants along the Arizona-Mexico border, began hearing the same stories from many who had been in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol.

Thwarted would-be unauthorized immigrants spoke of being denied water or food during their custody. Others said they were beaten.

The organization started properly documenting these allegations, and the stories added up to nearly 13,000 testimonies whose results were released in a report this week.

The findings went beyond denial of food and water. Migrants held by the Border Patrol spoke of being exposed to extreme heat or cold, sleep deprivation, death threats, and psychological abuse such as blaring music with lyrics about migrants dying in the desert.

A previous report by No More Deaths in 2008 raised the same concerns, but now the number of recorded cases point to a systematic problem.

“By this point, the overwhelming weight of the corroborated evidence should eliminate any doubt that Border Patrol abuse is widespread,” the report states.

The Border Patrol responded with a statement highlighting the fact that respect for detainees is taught in training and consistently reinforced during an agent’s career.

“Mistreatment or agent misconduct will not be tolerated in any way,” the statement said. “We appreciate the efforts of individuals to report concerns as soon as they arise and we will continue to cooperate fully with any effort to investigate allegations of agent misconduct or mistreatment of individuals.”

The interviews were conducted with migrants in Naco, Nogales and Agua Prieta, in Mexico’s Sonora state who were in border patrol custody. Although No More Deaths conducted thousands of interviews, in places like Nogales they could only speak with a fraction of the migrants who crossed. This raised the issue of how representative their sample was, said Katerina Sinclair, a statistical consultant on the report.

But in Naco, a smaller town, they were able to speak with enough migrants to have a representative sample. So the report stays away from making conclusions about percentages except for the subset of interviewees from Naco. But despite the difficulties with such an ambitious project, the authors say that the numbers on their own are cause for concern.

Some 2,981 people reported they were denied food, and more than 11,000 said they were given insufficient food by the Border Patrol, the report states.

The report found that 863 people, many of whom were already dehydrated, were denied water.

There were nearly 6,000 cases of overcrowding reported, and almost 3,000 people had at least some personal belongings not returned, the report states.

In addition, 869 people — including 17 children and 41 teenagers — reported that they were split from their families and deported separately.

No More Deaths also recorded instances of sleep deprivation, death threats, and the forced holding of strenuous positions.

“There’s no question that there is systematic abuse of people in Border Patrol custody,” Danielle Alvarado, one of the report’s authors, told CNN.

Although the research focused on migrants in the Arizona border area, the findings are consistent with reports from Border Patrol sectors across the country, she said.

“This systematic abuse must be confronted aggressively at the institutional level, not denied or dismissed as a series of aberrational incidents attributable to a few rogue agents,” the report states.

In its statement, the Border Patrol responded that, “on a daily basis, agents make every effort to ensure that people in our custody are given food, water, and medical attention as needed.”

“The sad reality is that between what they say on paper and the day-to-day reality there is a big disconnect,” Alvarado said.

Brandon Judd, president of Local 2544, the Tucson branch of the National Border Patrol Council, said that it is No More Deaths’ report that is disconnected from reality.

Border patrol agents are law-abiding citizens who believe in accountability, he said. “If these allegations are true, these are crimes,” he said.

There are 3,000 agents in the Tucson Sector of the Border Patrol, Judd said, and one complaint every two weeks would be considered a lot. Agents also police themselves, he said.

“I can tell you that our agents are the ones who report mistreatment if they see it,” he said.

He was skeptical about the types of questions that were asked and the credibility of the interviewees who were freshly repatriated.

“There’s some glaring weaknesses in the story,” he said.

But Sinclair said that care was taken to make sure that all conclusions were drawn from the Naco sample, which also happened to report the lowest rate of incidents. The questions were also phrased in a way to give credit to the Border Patrol where due.

“We gave them every benefit of the doubt,” she said. But their research shows that “it only gets worse from here.”

“It just doesn’t ring true,” Judd said.

The reports of abuses come as the number of apprehensions along the border has decreased. Increased border enforcement and a slow economic recovery in the United States have reduced the amount of illegal traffic across the border.

Also, No More Deaths reported, the demographics of those being deported have changed. A number of the migrants they interviewed were older and had been in the United States longer. One sample of 100 migrants revealed an average of 14.4 years of living in the United States before deportation.

In light of its report, its authors argue for legally enforceable standards, and a tougher oversight mechanism.

From October of last year to the present, about 115,000 migrants were apprehended by the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector.

Appeared Here

Torture: Crazed Fort Lee New Jersey Police Officers Left Teens Locked In A Van In Freezing Cold Temperatures For 14 Hours Without Food, Water, Or A Bathroom

FORT LEE, NEW JERSEY – Police who busted a Fort Lee, N.J., high school house party over the weekend left a van full of teens locked up and parked outside in the freezing cold for 14 hours without food, water or access to a bathroom.

Officials only realized what had happened after a passerby heard screams and banging from the police van where five teens were trapped, NBC New York has learned.

“We were cold, dehydrated, hungry,” said Tony, 17. “I mean it was the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

Police raided the house party at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday because of noise complaints from neighbors, according to Fort Lee borough attorney Lee Cohen.

Several kids were rounded up and driven away in the van. Then, as temperatures dropped into the 20s and 30s, they were forgotten.

Three of the teens spoke to NBC New York on Monday, on condition that their last names would not be used.

They said they tried breaking out of the van, banging and kicking its doors to no avail. They pressed up together to stay warm against the cold, as their parents wondered where they were.

“We had to huddle up together and just share body heat pretty much,” said another boy, Liam.

And without anywhere to relieve themselves, they had to urinate inside the van.

Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said an internal investigation has been launched within the Fort Lee police department.

Cohen, the Fort Lee borough attorney, declined to comment on the teens left outside, other than to say the case is under “active investigation.”

Appeared Here

State Department Official Quits After Criticizing U.S. Military’s Abuse Of WikiLeaks Army Soldier

WASHINGTON, DC – State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley has resigned after publicly crossing swords with the Pentagon over the treatment of an Army soldier accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified military reports and sensitive diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. 

The chain of events that led to Crowley’s exit was set in motion Thursday when Crowley appeared at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology seminar and called the Pentagon’s handling of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is detained at the brig at Quantico, “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”

Crowley’s public criticism angered some at the Pentagon and others across the administration because it put him directly at odds with Defense Department officials who have spent weeks trying to defend Manning’s treatment. The soldier is being detained under near-constant lockdown, and he filed a formal complaint about being forced to strip each night at bedtime.

The State spokesman’s predicament may have worsened further Friday afternoon, when ABC’s Jake Tapper asked Obama during a White House press conference whether he agreed with Crowley.

“With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are,” Obama said. “I can’t go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning’s safety as well.”

When Tapper pressed the president further, Obama replied tersely, “I think I gave you an answer to the substantive issue.”

Obama never said explicitly whether he agreed with the military’s handling of Manning. White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to elaborate on the president’s remarks.

In a statement Sunday, Crowley, notably made no apology for his remarks, but acknowledged that they made his continued service untenable.

“The unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a serious crime under U.S. law. My recent comments regarding the conditions of the pre-trial detention of Private First Class Bradley Manning were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership. The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values,” Crowley said.

“Given the impact of my remarks, for which I take full responsibility, I have submitted my resignation as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and Spokesman for the Department of State,” Crowley said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement that she accepted Crowley’s resignation “with regret.”

His service, she wrote, “is motivated by a deep devotion to public policy and public diplomacy, and I wish him the very best.”

According to administration officials, Crowley had been on the outs with Clinton, and rarely accompanied her on her travels abroad. Michael Hammer, President Barack Obama’s NSC spokesman, had been sent to State earlier this year, and some officials expected  him to succeed Crowley, those sources said.

However, other officials offered a somewhat conflicting version of events, saying that Crowley asked for Hammer as a deputy. The two men worked closely together at the NSC when both were spokesmen there during the Clinton Administration. One source denied any rift between Clinton and Crowley, saying the decision for him not to travel was made largely so Crowley could better oversee State’s large public affairs staff.

Crowley made his remarks about Manning in response to a question at an MIT new media roundtable Thursday in Cambridge, Mass.

“I spent 26 years in the Air Force,” Crowley, a retired colonel, said, according to blog posts by two of those present at the MIT discussion. “What is happening to Manning is ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid, and I don’t know why the DoD is doing it. Nevertheless, Manning is in the right place” in detention.

Manning has formally complained that guards at the brig have harassed him and that commanders there have punished him since he was placed in custody in July.

Manning, 25, faces a possible court-martial for leaking vast troves of classified information. The Army recently upgraded the preliminary charges against him to include aiding the enemy. That can be punishable by death, though Army prosecutors said they did not plan to seek capital punishment in Manning’s case.

Earlier this month, guards began demanding that he strip off all his clothes at night. Defense officials have suggested that the measure was needed to keep Manning from attempting suicide. But Manning’s official complaint notes that Navy psychiatrists who have examined him don’t believe he’s a suicide risk.

Journalist Philippa Thomas and Internet researcher Ethan Zuckerman, who both were at the MIT discussion conference, reported Crowley’s comments.

Thomas said she later asked Crowley if his remarks were on the record. She said he had a one-word reply: “‘Sure.’”

“What I said was my personal opinion. It does not reflect an official [U.S. government] policy position,” Crowley told Foreign Policy magazine on Friday. “I defer to the Department of Defense regarding the treatment of Bradley Manning.”

“We are aware of Mr. Crowley’s remarks and have since sent him the facts on PFC Manning’s pre-trial confinement,” a Pentagon spokesman, Army Col. Dave Lapan, said Saturday.

On Thursday, Manning’s defense lawyer released his client’s latest complaint about his treatment, an 11-page memo that claimed he’s being improperly held on a “prevention of injury” status and required to hand over his clothes to guards each night. The complaint said he was recently given a “smock” to wear at night.

“The determination to strip me of my clothing every night since 2 March 2011 is without justification and therefore constitutes unlawful pretrial punishment,” Manning wrote. He said Navy psychiatrists have repeatedly recommended lifting the prevention of injury restrictions but brig commanders have declined.

The order for Manning to strip at night apparently followed what he described as a sarcastic comment he made to guards — that if he were intent on strangling himself, he could use his underwear or flip-flops.

“As the result of concerns for PFC Manning’s personal safety, his undergarments were taken from him during sleeping hours,” Lapan confirmed. “PFC Manning at all times had a bed and a blanket to cover himself. He was not made to stand naked for morning count but, but on one day, he chose to do so. There were no female personnel present at the time. PFC Manning has since been issued a garment to sleep in at night.”

There were immediate signs Sunday that, as a result of his firing, Crowley was becoming a kind of cult hero for the left.

Jane Hamsher, writing on the liberal Firedoglake website, branded Crowley’s abrupt departure as Obama’s “Saturday Night Massacre” — a reference to the resignation of Attorney General Eliot Richardson and his deputy after they refused to carry out President Richard Nixon’s order to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

In recent months, Crowley had been a key spokesperson for the administration on the WikiLeaks issue, sometimes offering harsh assessments of Manning’s alleged conduct.

“Someone inside the United States government violated the trust and confidence placed in him. He downloaded material and passed it to people not authorized to have it. That is a crime. We’re investigating that crime and we’re going to prosecute those responsible,” Crowley told CNN in December.

Appeared Here

$5 Million Federal Lawsuit Charges Whitfield County Georgia Deputies With Torturing 29 Inmates At County Jail

WHITFIELD COUNTY, GEORGIA – Twenty-nine northwest Georgia inmates were forced to rub cream on their bodies and stand in their cells naked for 12 hours, according to federal lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed against the Whitfield County sheriff’s office in U.S. District Court in Rome, seeks $5 million in punitive damages, The Daily Citizen in Dalton reported. The suit contends the inmates were humiliated while behind bars at the Whitfield County jail in October.

A sheriff’s office captain told the newspaper the cream was an anti-lice treatment. Two members of the jail staff were disciplined following the incident, according to the report.

“They came into the dorm and told us to strip, and never told us why,” David Bennett, one of the two inmates that filed the suit, told the newspaper. “They said it’d be for a couple of hours with no covering. I’ve been in prison, but this had never happened. It seemed absurd to me. I was physically sick for a week afterward from the cold, and all because they think some 18-year-old kid who had left the day before had lice.”

Bennett has been arrested and booked 35 times at the Whitfield County jail since 1999, according to documents provided by the sheriff’s office. His most recent arrest in October was for sale of methamphetamine, use of a communication facility in drug transactions, felony probation violation and giving false information to officers, the newspaper reported.

Appeared Here

UK To Spend Millions Compensating Victims Tortured By U.S. Authorities

LONDON, UK – Bidding to restore the reputations of MI5 and MI6 and to rebuild damaged intelligence links with the United States, the British government said on Tuesday that it had agreed to pay compensation running into millions of dollars to 15 former detainees at Guantánamo Bay and one man still held there who have accused Britain’s intelligence agencies of colluding in their torture in the American-run detention system.

The government move followed years of lawsuits by the former detainees in which British officials have been required to hand over to the courts here intelligence information that came from the United States, prompting high-level American warnings that future intelligence cooperation might be curbed.

The domestic and overseas British spy agencies have seen their own operations dragged into the headlines, with dozens of officers engaged full time preparing to defend the lawsuits.

Against that background, the government of Prime Minister David Cameron chose to “draw a line” under the affair, in the words of the justice minister, Kenneth Clarke, who announced the compensation deal for the 16 men, all of whom are British citizens or legal residents here.

Although Mr. Clarke withheld financial details, saying he was honoring a demand by the former detainees, he said the payments would “save public money” by avoiding years of litigation that could have cost $50 million to $80 million.

Mr. Clarke said the deal “involves no concession of liability” in respect of the torture accusations, and “no withdrawal of the allegations” made by the former detainees. They have said in their lawsuits that agents of MI5 and MI6 worked closely with the C.I.A. and other American agencies involved in their interrogation, and must have known about the torture and mistreatment. They said they suffered so-called stress techniques like sleep deprivation; subjection to extremes of noise: heat and cold, beatings and death threats.

MI5 and MI6 have said that they rigorously opposed torture, but Scotland Yard has been weighing criminal charges against at least one MI6 officer.

In the House of Commons, the deal was greeted with a mixture of reluctant acceptance and outrage, with one Labour Party backbencher saying that “ordinary decent people will be thinking the world’s gone mad,” with the government paying more to the former detainees than to victims of terrorist attacks in Britain, and Dennis Skinner, another prominent Labour gadfly, shouting “money for old rope!”

Mr. Clarke, a 70-year-old lawyer who held many of the top cabinet posts in previous Conservative governments, admitted to a personal unease at the prospect of paying large sums of taxpayers’ money to individuals who were held for years in Guantánamo and other detention centers around the world under suspicion of being linked to terrorist plots against the United States.

He described the deal as one that “everybody is uncomfortable with, and many will dislike,” and added that many people in Britain might conclude that the government was rewarding individuals who were “advancing frivolous claims” against the British secret agencies “and getting away with murder.” Still, he said, the government had concluded that it was “better to draw a line under these cases and move on,” freeing MI5 and MI6 to get on with their work and safeguarding Britain’s “very, very important” intelligence ties with the United States.

Much of the criticism in Parliament focused on the government’s refusal to say exactly how much money was involved in the compensation settlements. Mr. Clarke offered no argument when opposition members said that the estimate of the legal costs saved by the settlement, and estimates of the compensation package running as high as $80 million that appeared in Britain’s morning newspapers, sourced to unnamed officials, were a pointer to the amounts involved. For the government, he said, it was a question of “how many tens of millions were we prepared to spend to engage in interminable litigation?” The settlement with the detainees came only weeks after Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, insisted that his operatives did not use or collude in torture. In the most declaratory statement anyone from the agency has made, Sir John called torture “illegal and abhorrent under any circumstances, and we have nothing whatsoever to do with it.”

Mr. Clarke used similar words to disavow any British involvement in torture, calling it “a serious criminal offense,” whether committed at home or abroad. “And we will not condone it,” he said.

The path to Tuesday’s settlement in Britain opened in July when Mr. Cameron approved negotiations on a deal. That followed a court order demanding the disclosure of a reported 500,000 confidential documents, prompting Mr. Cameron to say that reviewing the documents would take up huge amounts of time at Britain’s intelligence agencies. Mr. Cameron also announced the appointment of an independent inquiry into the accusations of MI5 and MI6 collusion with the C.I.A. and other foreign organizations in the torture of terrorism suspects.

Mr. Cameron said a retired appeals court judge, Sir Peter Gibson, would lead a three-member panel to review actions by the security services that have led to a dozen cases before British courts in which former detainees have charged that the British agencies of knew — or should have known — that the detainees were being mistreated.

It was men at the heart of those cases who made the deal with the government that was announced on Tuesday, ending the lawsuits and assuring the government that it would not have to disclose any more secret documents.

The former detainees who will be beneficiaries of the government payout include Jamil el-Banna, Moazzam Begg, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohamed, Martin Mubanga and Bishar al-Rawi. Some of them, especially Mr. Mohamed and Mr. Begg, have become well-known in a broad human rights debate in Britain. Several of the men, including Mr. Mohamed, spent years under investigation by American investigators, accused of plotting attacks against the United States, only to be released back to Britain when the cases were dropped.

One of the 16 men on the compensation list, Shaker Aamer, who remains at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after nine years of detention, has alleged that MI5 officers were present when he was beaten by American investigators in Afghanistan.

Appeared Here

Feds Lose Key Witness In 1st Civilian Trial Of Guantanamo Bay Torture Prison Detainee

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The judge in the first civilian trial of a Guantanamo Bay detainee barred the prosecution’s star witness Wednesday from testifying, dealing a major setback to the government’s effort to build criminal cases with evidence obtained through harsh CIA interrogations overseas.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said the witness could not take the stand because investigators learned of his existence through coercive questioning of the defendant, terrorism suspect Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, at a secret CIA camp.

“The court has not reached this conclusion lightly,” Kaplan wrote. “It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the Constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction.”

The ruling stunned prosecutors, who asked for and received an immediate delay in the case while they decide whether to appeal. It also re-energized the debate over whether terrorism suspects captured overseas should be prosecuted in civilian courts and whether the American justice system is up to the task.

Despite the setback, Attorney General Eric Holder said at a Washington news conference that he remains confident the Justice Department can successfully prosecute Ghailani in civilian court. He noted there have been over 300 successful prosecutions in civilian courts in terrorism cases.

The delay came during the final selection of jurors in the case against Ghailani, a Tanzanian charged in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The twin attacks killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans.

The man who was supposed to be the government’s star witness, Hussein Abebe, said he sold explosives to Ghailani that were used in the bombing. But defense lawyers said prosecutors never would have learned about Abebe if Ghailani had not divulged his identity while undergoing harsh interrogations at a secret overseas CIA camp in 2004.

Ghailani’s attorney, Peter E. Quijano, praised the judge’s ruling.

“It is the Constitution that won a great victory today,” Quijano said. “This case will be tried upon lawful evidence, not torture, not coercion.”

Michael Farkas, a former Army judge advocate and now a civilian attorney, said the ruling shows why those backing military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees contend that “civilian criminal courts are no place for war criminals.” He said the military rules of evidence do not give defendants some of the protections they are afforded in the civilian justice system.

“In a military tribunal, this witness would not have been precluded,” Farkas said.

Anthony S. Barkow, executive director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at the New York University School of Law, called the ruling “a significant blow” to prosecutors. But he noted that Ghailani was indicted before they learned about the witness, and he said they presumably have ample evidence without him.

The ruling “will certainly be cited in arguments relating to future decisions as to where to try these cases,” said Barkow, a former federal terrorism prosecutor in New York City who later observed Guantanamo proceedings for a human rights group.

Human Rights First’s Daphne Eviatar, who is monitoring the trial for the organization, said Kaplan’s ruling recognizing that “evidence derived through torture is inadmissible only strengthens the view that civilian federal courts, not military commissions, can best handle difficult terrorism cases.”

Ghailani was smiling after the judge ruled.

There was little controversy when Ghailani was brought to New York for trial in 2009, but the subject of where to try Guantanamo Bay detainees became heated after Holder announced last November that the professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others would be tried blocks from where the World Trade Center stood. Holder later said he was reconsidering.

Ghailani is accused of being a bomb-maker, document forger and aide to Osama bin Laden. He is charged with conspiring in the 1998 bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.

Prosecutors had repeatedly called Abebe’s testimony vital to their case.

But the judge said Abebe was identified and located as a “close and direct result of statements made by Ghailani” while in CIA custody. He noted the government had decided not to contest the details of Ghailani’s treatment while in CIA custody and had told the judge to assume that everything Ghailani said while in CIA custody was coerced.

Though many of the details about his treatment have been kept secret, the defense divulged during a pretrial hearing that he was subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques for 14 hours over five days. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the CIA used 10 harsh methods, including waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, against select detainees.

The judge previously rejected a defense request to throw out the charges because of Ghailani’s treatment at the hands of the CIA.

Appeared Here

Los Angeles County California Gets Free Laser Based Weapon To Use On Jail Imates

CASTAIC, CALIFORNIA – Guards at the Los Angeles County jail complex in Castaic will start using a newfangled weapon that produces a deep burning sensation — which is not to be confused with a “warm fuzzy feeling” — in whomever it is aimed at.

The 7 1/2-foot-tall “Assault Intervention Device,” which sheriff’s deputies demonstrated Friday at the Pitchess Detention Center, emits an invisible beam that causes an unbearable sensation, reported the Daily News.

The device will be mounted near the ceiling in a unit housing about 65 inmates, sheriff’s Cmdr. Bob Osborne of the sheriff’ Technology Exploration Program told the newspaper.

“We hope that this type of technology will either cause an inmate to stop an assault or lessen the severity of an assault by them being distracted by the pain as a result of the beam,” said Osborne. “So that we have fewer injuries, fewer assaults, those kinds of things.”

Deputies have tested the device on themselves and say the invisible beam is painful — especially when it’s not expected.

“I equate it to opening an oven door and feeling that blast of hot air, except instead of being all over me, it’s more focused,” said Osborne.

The pain stops when you move out of the beam’s path, which people do instinctively.

The device, developed by Raytheon, is controlled by a joystick and computer monitor and emits a beam about the size of a CD up to distances of about 100 feet.

The energy traveling at the speed of light penetrates the skin up to 1/64 of an inch deep. No one can stand being in the beam’s path for more than about three seconds, Mike Booen of Raytheon told the Daily News.

The device is being evaluated for a period of six months by the National Institute of Justice for use in jails nationwide.

Sheriff’s deputies are getting to try it out for free.

About 3,700 inmates are housed at Pitchess, where 257 inmate-on-inmate assaults occurred in the first half of the year.

Do you think this is a controversial weapon with the potential for major misuse and abuse, or is it just another way to restore order in our prisons?

Appeared Here

100’s Of Millions Of US Taxpayer Dollars Wasted On Bush’s Tortue Prisons And Guantanamo Bay Base

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — At the U.S. naval station here, a handsome electronic sign hangs between two concrete pillars. In yellow enamel against a blue metal backdrop is a map of Cuba, the “Pearl of the Antilles,” above flashing time and temperature readings.

“Welcome Aboard,” the sign says.

The cost of the marquee, along with a smaller sign positioned near the airfield: $188,000. Among other odd legacies from war-on-terror spending since 2001 for the troops at Guantanamo Bay: an abandoned volleyball court for $249,000, an unused go-kart track for $296,000 and $3.5 million for 27 playgrounds that are often vacant.

The Pentagon also spent $683,000 to renovate a cafe that sells ice cream and Starbucks coffee, and $773,000 to remodel a cinder-block building to house a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant.

The spending is part of at least $500 million that has transformed what was once a sun-beaten and forgotten Caribbean base into one of the most secure military and prison installations in the world. That does not include construction bonuses, which typically run into the millions.

Also not included are annual operating costs of $150 million — double the amount for a comparable U.S. prison, according to the White House. Add in clandestine black-budget items, such as the top-secret Camp 7 prison for high-value detainees, aptly nicknamed Camp Platinum, and the post-Sept. 11, 2001, bill for the 45-square-mile base easily soars toward $2 billion.

The Obama administration wants to close the detention operation and relocate it to a prison in Illinois, but the prospect of seeing the final detainees depart seems increasingly like a long-term project. If the president does succeed, the Pentagon will leave behind a newly remodeled military encampment, along with numerous questions about whether the cost of creating what then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld once called the “least worst place” for suspected terrorists was worth the price.

In the first public accounting of how much has been spent on the base since the first detainees arrived in January 2002, The Washington Post obtained from the military a line-by-line breakdown of capital expenditures, ranging from the mundane to the exotic.

Overall, the prison camp operation that hugs the Caribbean coastline cost about $220 million to build over several years, a price that does not include Camp 7, which holds 16 of the most notorious detainees, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. And $13 million was spent to construct a courthouse complex that appears custom-designed for Mohammed and his four co-defendants.

But as spending accelerated over the years, and more and more construction and renovation contracts were awarded, the number of detainees steadily declined, from a peak of 680 in May 2003 to 181 now.

Many of the projects itemized in the breakdown are reminders of suburban America — familiar settings re-created in a Caribbean hothouse to comfort the military personnel and contractors who run detainee operations.

Millions went to build artificial-turf football and baseball fields that professional players would envy, surrounded by a cluster of facilities, including a running track, a skate park, an outdoor roller hockey rink and batting cages.

[Story Continues On Original Site Below]

Appeared Here

Criminal Bush Officials Imune After Kidnappings And Torture

WASHINGTON, DC – The Supreme Court rejected on Monday a lawsuit by a Pakistani man against a former U.S. attorney general and the FBI director claiming abuse while he was imprisoned in New York after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

By a 5-4 vote, the U.S. high court overturned a ruling that Javaid Iqbal, who was held more than a year after the attacks, could sue former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

The decision appeared to be narrow, limited to the facts of the case, although it could be cited as precedent in other lawsuits.

The civil case involves different legal issues than the recent demands by human rights groups to hold former Bush administration officials accountable for what they describe as torture of terrorism suspects.

Iqbal, a Muslim, said in the lawsuit that he had suffered verbal and physical abuse, including unnecessary strip searches and brutal beatings by guards. He said he had been singled out because of unlawful ethnic and religious discrimination.

Writing for the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said Iqbal’s lawsuit failed to plead sufficient facts to state a claim for purposeful, unlawful discrimination.

Kennedy also ruled there was insufficient evidence that Ashcroft and Mueller had deprived Iqbal of his clearly established constitutional rights.

AFTER SEPTEMBER 11

In the weeks after the September 11 attacks, U.S. authorities detained 762 noncitizens, almost all Muslims or Arabs. Many of those held at the federal prison in Brooklyn suffered abuse, the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general has found.

The Bush administration said that Ashcroft and Mueller have immunity, that they should not be held personally liable and that the lawsuit against them should be dismissed.

Ashcroft and Mueller argued they have qualified legal immunity because any misconduct was done by lower-level officials and they had no personal involvement in or knowledge of the alleged abuse.

The issue before the Supreme Court involved only whether Iqbal’s lawsuit against Ashcroft and Mueller could continue and did not address his claims of mistreatment against other lower-ranking current and former government officials.

Iqbal sued about 30 other current or former U.S. government officials, including the warden at the detention facility and the director of the federal Bureau of Prisons. He seeks unspecified damages.

Iqbal was arrested for having false Social Security papers. He pleaded guilty in 2002, was released in 2003 and deported to Pakistan. The lawsuit was filed in 2004.

The U.S. government paid $300,000 to settle with Iqbal’s co-plaintiff and fellow detainee Ehab Elmaghraby, an Egyptian.

Appeared Here

Criminal Bush Officials Imune After Kidnappings And Torture

WASHINGTON, DC – The Supreme Court rejected on Monday a lawsuit by a Pakistani man against a former U.S. attorney general and the FBI director claiming abuse while he was imprisoned in New York after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

By a 5-4 vote, the U.S. high court overturned a ruling that Javaid Iqbal, who was held more than a year after the attacks, could sue former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

The decision appeared to be narrow, limited to the facts of the case, although it could be cited as precedent in other lawsuits.

The civil case involves different legal issues than the recent demands by human rights groups to hold former Bush administration officials accountable for what they describe as torture of terrorism suspects.

Iqbal, a Muslim, said in the lawsuit that he had suffered verbal and physical abuse, including unnecessary strip searches and brutal beatings by guards. He said he had been singled out because of unlawful ethnic and religious discrimination.

Writing for the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said Iqbal’s lawsuit failed to plead sufficient facts to state a claim for purposeful, unlawful discrimination.

Kennedy also ruled there was insufficient evidence that Ashcroft and Mueller had deprived Iqbal of his clearly established constitutional rights.

AFTER SEPTEMBER 11

In the weeks after the September 11 attacks, U.S. authorities detained 762 noncitizens, almost all Muslims or Arabs. Many of those held at the federal prison in Brooklyn suffered abuse, the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general has found.

The Bush administration said that Ashcroft and Mueller have immunity, that they should not be held personally liable and that the lawsuit against them should be dismissed.

Ashcroft and Mueller argued they have qualified legal immunity because any misconduct was done by lower-level officials and they had no personal involvement in or knowledge of the alleged abuse.

The issue before the Supreme Court involved only whether Iqbal’s lawsuit against Ashcroft and Mueller could continue and did not address his claims of mistreatment against other lower-ranking current and former government officials.

Iqbal sued about 30 other current or former U.S. government officials, including the warden at the detention facility and the director of the federal Bureau of Prisons. He seeks unspecified damages.

Iqbal was arrested for having false Social Security papers. He pleaded guilty in 2002, was released in 2003 and deported to Pakistan. The lawsuit was filed in 2004.

The U.S. government paid $300,000 to settle with Iqbal’s co-plaintiff and fellow detainee Ehab Elmaghraby, an Egyptian.

Appeared Here

Torture And Abuse Worsen At Guantanamo Since Obama Took Office

GUANTANAMO, CUBA – A freed Guantanamo prisoner has said conditions at the US detention camp in Cuba have worsened since President Barack Obama was elected, claiming guards wanted to “take their last revenge”.

Binyam Mohamed, the first detainee to be transferred out of Guantanamo Bay since Obama took office, also said British agents “sold me out” by cooperating with his alleged torturers, in his first interview since release which was published Sunday.

Mohamed, a 30-year-old Ethiopian-born former British resident, gave further details of what he has called the “medieval” torture he faced in Pakistan and Morocco, as well as in a secret CIA prison in Kabul and at Guantanamo.

“The result of my experience is that I feel emotionally dead,” he told the Mail on Sunday newspaper. “It seems like a miracle my brain is still intact.”

Far from improving, Mohamed said conditions at Guantanamo have worsened since Obama was elected in November.

The US president had promised during his campaign to shut down the Guantanamo prison and two days after taking office announced it would close this year.

“Since the election it’s got harsher,” Mohamed told the newspaper. “The guards would say, ‘yes, this place is going to close down,’ but it was like they wanted to take their last revenge.”

He also claimed the Emergency Reaction Force at Guantanamo, a team which he said punishes inmates in their cells and once almost gouged his eyes out when he declined to give his fingerprints, is now being used more often.

Mohamed said he was beaten at Guantanamo and also described mistreatment at other detention centres.

He said his chest and penis were slashed with razors while he was held in Morocco.

In Afghanistan, he said he lived in constant darkness for five months and “came close to insanity” after being forced to listen to the same album by rapper Eminem at a deafening volume for a solid month.

He flew back to Britain last month, tasting freedom for the first time since 2002 when he was arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of attending an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and plotting to build a radioactive “dirty bomb”.

But the United States never charged him, and British police also questioned him on his return and let him go free.

In the newspaper interview, Mohamed gave further details of his claim that British officials had colluded in his alleged torture.

He said while he was in Morocco in 2002, his Moroccan interrogators “started bringing British files to the interrogations… it was obvious the British were feeding them questions about people in London.

“When I realised that the British were cooperating with the people torturing me, I felt completely naked,” he said. “They sold me out.”

He said he subsequently made false confessions about one plot to build a “dirty” nuclear bomb and another to blow up apartments in New York linked to alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The paper also quoted two telegrams, shown to Mohamed by his military lawyer, from Britain’s MI5 security service to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in November 2002. They allegedly detail specific questions that the British wanted to be put to Mohamed.

“We note that we have also requested that briefs be put to Binyam Mohamed and would appreciate a guide from you as to the likely timescale for these too,” one is quoted as saying.

“We fully appreciate that this can be a long-winded process but the urgent nature of these enquiries will be obvious to you.”

In response to the claims, Britain’s Foreign Office released a statement saying: “We abhor torture and never order it or condone it…

“In the case of Binyam Mohamed, an allegation of possible criminal wrong-doing has been referred to the Attorney General. We need now to wait for her report.”

Mohamed is undergoing therapy to come to terms with his experiences.

Looking to the future, he said he wanted to stay in Britain, which is currently considering whether to let him remain. “It’s the only place I can call home,” he said.

In an editorial, this week’s Independent on Sunday said his case was “only the most dreadful of many instances where the British government’s policy seems to have been to turn a blind eye”.

Appeared Here

Torture And Abuse Worsen At Guantanamo Since Obama Took Office

GUANTANAMO, CUBA – A freed Guantanamo prisoner has said conditions at the US detention camp in Cuba have worsened since President Barack Obama was elected, claiming guards wanted to “take their last revenge”.

Binyam Mohamed, the first detainee to be transferred out of Guantanamo Bay since Obama took office, also said British agents “sold me out” by cooperating with his alleged torturers, in his first interview since release which was published Sunday.

Mohamed, a 30-year-old Ethiopian-born former British resident, gave further details of what he has called the “medieval” torture he faced in Pakistan and Morocco, as well as in a secret CIA prison in Kabul and at Guantanamo.

“The result of my experience is that I feel emotionally dead,” he told the Mail on Sunday newspaper. “It seems like a miracle my brain is still intact.”

Far from improving, Mohamed said conditions at Guantanamo have worsened since Obama was elected in November.

The US president had promised during his campaign to shut down the Guantanamo prison and two days after taking office announced it would close this year.

“Since the election it’s got harsher,” Mohamed told the newspaper. “The guards would say, ‘yes, this place is going to close down,’ but it was like they wanted to take their last revenge.”

He also claimed the Emergency Reaction Force at Guantanamo, a team which he said punishes inmates in their cells and once almost gouged his eyes out when he declined to give his fingerprints, is now being used more often.

Mohamed said he was beaten at Guantanamo and also described mistreatment at other detention centres.

He said his chest and penis were slashed with razors while he was held in Morocco.

In Afghanistan, he said he lived in constant darkness for five months and “came close to insanity” after being forced to listen to the same album by rapper Eminem at a deafening volume for a solid month.

He flew back to Britain last month, tasting freedom for the first time since 2002 when he was arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of attending an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and plotting to build a radioactive “dirty bomb”.

But the United States never charged him, and British police also questioned him on his return and let him go free.

In the newspaper interview, Mohamed gave further details of his claim that British officials had colluded in his alleged torture.

He said while he was in Morocco in 2002, his Moroccan interrogators “started bringing British files to the interrogations… it was obvious the British were feeding them questions about people in London.

“When I realised that the British were cooperating with the people torturing me, I felt completely naked,” he said. “They sold me out.”

He said he subsequently made false confessions about one plot to build a “dirty” nuclear bomb and another to blow up apartments in New York linked to alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The paper also quoted two telegrams, shown to Mohamed by his military lawyer, from Britain’s MI5 security service to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in November 2002. They allegedly detail specific questions that the British wanted to be put to Mohamed.

“We note that we have also requested that briefs be put to Binyam Mohamed and would appreciate a guide from you as to the likely timescale for these too,” one is quoted as saying.

“We fully appreciate that this can be a long-winded process but the urgent nature of these enquiries will be obvious to you.”

In response to the claims, Britain’s Foreign Office released a statement saying: “We abhor torture and never order it or condone it…

“In the case of Binyam Mohamed, an allegation of possible criminal wrong-doing has been referred to the Attorney General. We need now to wait for her report.”

Mohamed is undergoing therapy to come to terms with his experiences.

Looking to the future, he said he wanted to stay in Britain, which is currently considering whether to let him remain. “It’s the only place I can call home,” he said.

In an editorial, this week’s Independent on Sunday said his case was “only the most dreadful of many instances where the British government’s policy seems to have been to turn a blind eye”.

Appeared Here

Video Catches 3 Ft. Lauderdale Florida Police Officers Brutally Beating Man In Elevator – Officers Lied In Police Reports. Bogus Charges Against Their Victim Dismissed

FT. LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA – After a beat down in an elevator, Joshua Daniel Ortiz ended up with his nose broken and facing a charge of battering a Fort Lauderdale police officer.

The 22-year-old Sunrise man was surprised and delighted to learn Wednesday that Broward prosecutors were dropping the case against him after reviewing an elevator surveillance video showing three officers aggressively rush and beat Ortiz to the ground.

Once the Dec. 5 video surfaced, it altered the course of the case. It contradicted police reports that Ortiz provoked and attacked Officers Derek Lade, Stefan Silver and Steve Smith.

“They were just sitting there watching my life go down the drain with those charges,” Ortiz said Wednesday. “I’ve been going crazy thinking my life is over. It’s barely started and it’s over.”

The looming legal charges delayed Ortiz’s enrollment in college classes, he said.

Police first charged Ortiz with felony battery on a law enforcement officer.

But after seeing the video obtained by Ortiz’s defense attorney, Stephen Melnick, prosecutors downgraded the charge to a misdemeanor resisting charge. Upon further review, prosecutors dropped the case entirely.

“We thought based on the facts and the evidence, including the videotape, that there was no reasonable likelihood of conviction at trial,” said Lee Cohen, assistant state attorney in charge of misdemeanor cases.

Fort Lauderdale police internal affairs investigators reviewed the incident more than a month ago and found no violations of policy or procedures, said Sgt. Frank Sousa, the department’s spokesman.

“It was not a beating,” Sousa said. “The video clearly shows that [Ortiz] made a movement toward the officer.”

The 4:10 a.m. incident unfolded in a bank lobby at 200 SW First Ave. as Ortiz, his girlfriend and friends piled into an elevator, heading to a parking garage after a night out.

Acquaintances of Ortiz’s started fighting in the lobby, he said, drawing police to the scene.

According to Lade’s police report, Ortiz yelled at the officers from the elevator when they tried to break up the disturbance.

Ortiz “walked right up to me hitting his nose to my nose,” Lade wrote, adding that he pushed Ortiz.

“As I approached Ortiz to take him into custody, Ortiz spun around to face me and assumed a fighting stance (both left and right hand clenched into fists and body bladed),” he wrote.

Ortiz said he exchanged agitated words with the officers, but the rest is fiction.

“They were on a power trip,” Ortiz said. “I don’t trust them anymore.”

Melnick said the officers embellished their reports to justify their aggression without knowing the videotape existed.

“I think the video speaks for itself,” he said.

Appeared Here

Video Catches 3 Ft. Lauderdale Florida Police Officers Brutally Beating Man In Elevator – Officers Lied In Police Reports. Bogus Charges Against Their Victim Dismissed

FT. LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA – After a beat down in an elevator, Joshua Daniel Ortiz ended up with his nose broken and facing a charge of battering a Fort Lauderdale police officer.

The 22-year-old Sunrise man was surprised and delighted to learn Wednesday that Broward prosecutors were dropping the case against him after reviewing an elevator surveillance video showing three officers aggressively rush and beat Ortiz to the ground.

Once the Dec. 5 video surfaced, it altered the course of the case. It contradicted police reports that Ortiz provoked and attacked Officers Derek Lade, Stefan Silver and Steve Smith.

“They were just sitting there watching my life go down the drain with those charges,” Ortiz said Wednesday. “I’ve been going crazy thinking my life is over. It’s barely started and it’s over.”

The looming legal charges delayed Ortiz’s enrollment in college classes, he said.

Police first charged Ortiz with felony battery on a law enforcement officer.

But after seeing the video obtained by Ortiz’s defense attorney, Stephen Melnick, prosecutors downgraded the charge to a misdemeanor resisting charge. Upon further review, prosecutors dropped the case entirely.

“We thought based on the facts and the evidence, including the videotape, that there was no reasonable likelihood of conviction at trial,” said Lee Cohen, assistant state attorney in charge of misdemeanor cases.

Fort Lauderdale police internal affairs investigators reviewed the incident more than a month ago and found no violations of policy or procedures, said Sgt. Frank Sousa, the department’s spokesman.

“It was not a beating,” Sousa said. “The video clearly shows that [Ortiz] made a movement toward the officer.”

The 4:10 a.m. incident unfolded in a bank lobby at 200 SW First Ave. as Ortiz, his girlfriend and friends piled into an elevator, heading to a parking garage after a night out.

Acquaintances of Ortiz’s started fighting in the lobby, he said, drawing police to the scene.

According to Lade’s police report, Ortiz yelled at the officers from the elevator when they tried to break up the disturbance.

Ortiz “walked right up to me hitting his nose to my nose,” Lade wrote, adding that he pushed Ortiz.

“As I approached Ortiz to take him into custody, Ortiz spun around to face me and assumed a fighting stance (both left and right hand clenched into fists and body bladed),” he wrote.

Ortiz said he exchanged agitated words with the officers, but the rest is fiction.

“They were on a power trip,” Ortiz said. “I don’t trust them anymore.”

Melnick said the officers embellished their reports to justify their aggression without knowing the videotape existed.

“I think the video speaks for itself,” he said.

Appeared Here

Our Tax Dollars At Work: CIA Destroyed Nearly 100 Torture Tapes

WASHINGTON, DC – New documents show the CIA destroyed nearly 100 tapes of terror interrogations, far more than has previously been acknowledged.

The revelation Monday comes as a criminal prosecutor is wrapping up his investigation in the matter.

The acknowledgment of dozens of destroyed tapes came in a letter filed by government lawyers in New York, where the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit seeking more details of terror interrogation programs.

“The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed,” said the letter by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin. “Ninety two videotapes were destroyed.”

The tapes became a contentious issue in the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, after prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then acknowledged two videotapes and one audiotape had been made.

The letter, dated March 2 to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, says the CIA is now gathering more details for the lawsuit, including a list of the destroyed records, any secondary accounts that describe the destroyed contents, and the identities of those who may have viewed or possessed the recordings before they were destroyed.

But the lawyers also note that some of that information may be classified, such as the names of CIA personnel that viewed the tapes.

“The CIA intends to produce all of the information requested to the court and to produce as much information as possible on the public record to the plaintiffs,” states the letter.

John Durham, a senior career prosecutor in Connecticut, was appointed to lead the criminal investigation out of Virginia.

He had asked that the requests for information in the civil lawsuit be put on hold until he had completed his criminal investigation. Durham asked that he be given until the end of February to wrap up his work, and has not asked for another extension.

Appeared Here

Our Tax Dollars At Work: CIA Destroyed Nearly 100 Torture Tapes

WASHINGTON, DC – New documents show the CIA destroyed nearly 100 tapes of terror interrogations, far more than has previously been acknowledged.

The revelation Monday comes as a criminal prosecutor is wrapping up his investigation in the matter.

The acknowledgment of dozens of destroyed tapes came in a letter filed by government lawyers in New York, where the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit seeking more details of terror interrogation programs.

“The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed,” said the letter by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin. “Ninety two videotapes were destroyed.”

The tapes became a contentious issue in the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, after prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then acknowledged two videotapes and one audiotape had been made.

The letter, dated March 2 to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, says the CIA is now gathering more details for the lawsuit, including a list of the destroyed records, any secondary accounts that describe the destroyed contents, and the identities of those who may have viewed or possessed the recordings before they were destroyed.

But the lawyers also note that some of that information may be classified, such as the names of CIA personnel that viewed the tapes.

“The CIA intends to produce all of the information requested to the court and to produce as much information as possible on the public record to the plaintiffs,” states the letter.

John Durham, a senior career prosecutor in Connecticut, was appointed to lead the criminal investigation out of Virginia.

He had asked that the requests for information in the civil lawsuit be put on hold until he had completed his criminal investigation. Durham asked that he be given until the end of February to wrap up his work, and has not asked for another extension.

Appeared Here

Obama Administration Backs Rendition And Toture Under Bush – Boeing Subsidiary Employees Help Transport Victims For CIA Torture – "National Security" Used As Excuse In Attempt To Dismiss Lawsuit

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – A government lawyer urged an appeals court Monday to toss a lawsuit accusing a Boeing Co. subsidiary of illegally helping the CIA fly suspected terrorists overseas to be tortured, maintaining a Bush administration position that the case would jeopardize national security.

The American Civil Liberties Union and others had called on the White House to change direction and drop its move to dismiss the suit. The organization filed the lawsuit on behalf of five men swept up in the “extraordinary rendition” program and who are still being held in various prisons around the world.

The lawsuit claims that San Jose-based Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. should be punished for allegedly providing the CIA airplanes and crew to carry out the program that included torture.

The U.S. government intervened in the case and a trial court judge last year tossed it out after CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden invoked the government’s so-called “state secrets privilege,” which lets intelligence agencies bar the use of evidence in court cases that threaten national security.

U.S. Department of Justice lawyer Douglas Letter on Monday urged a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to uphold the lower court decision. Letter said his position was “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate” administration officials.

“These are the authorized positions of the administration,” Letter said in a response to a question from Judge Mary Schroeder.

Letter said that he was confident that Schroeder and her two colleagues on the appeals court would toss the suit after they read top secret legal documents the government filed with the court under seal.

The case presented Obama’s Justice Department with one of the first of many policy and legal decisions it faces in countless actions across the country left over from the Bush administration. Legal scholars contend that the prior administration stopped litigation involving the government by invoking state secret claims a record number of times, including in more than 40 legal challenges to the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretap program.

A Department of Justice spokesman in Washington, D.C., said government lawyers were reviewing all such state secret assertions in lawsuits across the country.

“It’s vital that we protect information that if released could jeopardize national security,” said Justice spokesman Matt Miller. “But the Justice Department will ensure the privilege is not invoked to hide from the American people information about their government’s actions that they have a right to know.”

Outside of court, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero criticized the new president.

“This is not change,” Romero said in a prepared statement. “Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue.”

Appeared Here

Obama Administration Backs Rendition And Toture Under Bush – Boeing Subsidiary Employees Help Transport Victims For CIA Torture – "National Security" Used As Excuse In Attempt To Dismiss Lawsuit

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – A government lawyer urged an appeals court Monday to toss a lawsuit accusing a Boeing Co. subsidiary of illegally helping the CIA fly suspected terrorists overseas to be tortured, maintaining a Bush administration position that the case would jeopardize national security.

The American Civil Liberties Union and others had called on the White House to change direction and drop its move to dismiss the suit. The organization filed the lawsuit on behalf of five men swept up in the “extraordinary rendition” program and who are still being held in various prisons around the world.

The lawsuit claims that San Jose-based Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. should be punished for allegedly providing the CIA airplanes and crew to carry out the program that included torture.

The U.S. government intervened in the case and a trial court judge last year tossed it out after CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden invoked the government’s so-called “state secrets privilege,” which lets intelligence agencies bar the use of evidence in court cases that threaten national security.

U.S. Department of Justice lawyer Douglas Letter on Monday urged a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to uphold the lower court decision. Letter said his position was “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate” administration officials.

“These are the authorized positions of the administration,” Letter said in a response to a question from Judge Mary Schroeder.

Letter said that he was confident that Schroeder and her two colleagues on the appeals court would toss the suit after they read top secret legal documents the government filed with the court under seal.

The case presented Obama’s Justice Department with one of the first of many policy and legal decisions it faces in countless actions across the country left over from the Bush administration. Legal scholars contend that the prior administration stopped litigation involving the government by invoking state secret claims a record number of times, including in more than 40 legal challenges to the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretap program.

A Department of Justice spokesman in Washington, D.C., said government lawyers were reviewing all such state secret assertions in lawsuits across the country.

“It’s vital that we protect information that if released could jeopardize national security,” said Justice spokesman Matt Miller. “But the Justice Department will ensure the privilege is not invoked to hide from the American people information about their government’s actions that they have a right to know.”

Outside of court, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero criticized the new president.

“This is not change,” Romero said in a prepared statement. “Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue.”

Appeared Here