NewsCloud.com Detainees News

Easing of laws that led to detainee abuse hatched in secret

WASHINGTON - The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn't the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers.

UK apology over rendition flights

David Miliband has admitted two US "extraordinary rendition" flights landed on UK territory in 2002. The foreign secretary said in both cases US planes refuelled on the UK dependent territory of Diego Garcia.

Rigged Trials at Guantanamo

The litany of complaints about the legal treatment of prisoners at Guant namo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon's announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guant namo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes - and seeking the death penalty for all of them.

2 Guantanamo detainees’ cases tossed

Military judges dismissed charges Monday against a Guantanamo detainee who chauffeured Osama bin Laden and another who allegedly killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, marking a stunning setback to Washington's attempts to try detainees in military court.

Legal expert: President Bush may have ordered torture of terror suspects

"It seems pretty clear that they've been tortured," Turley told the AP, "and that the president knew they were being tortured, and may have even ordered their torture through techniques like water boarding."

Former Detainees Argue for Right to Sue Rumsfeld Over Torture

This is going to be big: "The hearing Friday, before Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan in Federal District Court in Washington, was the first time a federal court had considered whether top administration officials could be liable for the torture of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan."

C.I.A. Tells of Bush’s Directive on the Handling of Detainees

The contents of the documents were not revealed, but one of them is a directive signed by President Bush granting the C.I.A. the authority to set up detention facilities outside the United States and outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees, the A.C.L.U. said, based on its review of published accounts.

Detainee Memo Created Divide in White House

Rumsfeld, Cheney and his allies fought against more moderate White House operatives to get what now has passed Congress as the Terrorist Detainee Bill.

12 Senate Democrats help pass Bush detainee bill

They are: Tom Carper (DE), Tim Johnson (SD), Mary Landrieu (LA), Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Joe Lieberman (CT), Bob Menendez (NJ), Bill Nelson (FL), Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Pryor (AR), Jay Rockefeller (WV), Ken Salazar (CO), and Debbie Stabenow (MI)

"Everything we don't believe in"

In a letter sent to members of Congress this week, 609 law professors offered: "Taken together, the bill s provisions rewrite American law to evade the fundamental principles of separation of powers, due process, habeas corpus, fair trials, and the rule of law, principles that, together, prohibit state-sanctioned violence."

Rushing Off a Cliff

The New York Times rightly rips the cynical and un-American terrorist detention bill nearing passage in the Senate.

Torture is bad, "Mmmmkay"?

Great post.

CIA Praises Deal; Harsh Techniques Would Continue

... in questioning certain high-value terror suspects, the CIA has used a series of six increasingly harsh interrogation techniques that begin with a slap to the face and end with a procedure called water boarding, in which a prisoner is made to feel he is drowning. Today's congressional deal, if signed into law, would allow the CIA to continue the six techniques and to continue to run secret prisons overseas for select terror suspects.

The GOP enacts its drama to perfection

The McCain-Graham-Warner proposal concerning military commissions was, from the beginning, an awful bill that was quite radical in its own right. ... as Yale law professor Jack Balkin explained, that the military can imprison, and torture, a detainee forever without ever bringing the detainee before a military commission, and the detainee has no means at all to challenge his detention or the treatment to which he is subjected. And by masquerading as the principled opponents to a handful of the most extreme provisions in the president's proposals, these "dissident Republican senators" were depicted as the moderates in the debate, as the reasonable, serious thinkers who would carefully balance the need for strong antiterrorist measures with the need to safeguard our basic liberties.

Top Republicans Reach an Accord on Detainee Bill

No detail yet, but McCain, Powell, Graham and Warner - the moderate Republicans - are for it.