U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said today that the body of Allal Ab-Aljallil Abd al-Rahman Abd (aka Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif) was repatriated to Yemen. The SOUTHCOM statement did not indicate the date or time the body was returned, nor who received the remains. On November 26, Jason Leopold at Truthout broke the story that Latif’s death would be attributed [...]
December 16, 2012 | Filed under
World |
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Many bloggers and the press have reposted Tarek Mehanna’s impassioned speech to the court as he was sentenced to 17-1/2 years for supposedly providing “material support” to terrorists. (See here, here, here, and especially the ACLU’s Nancy Murray’s widely quoted article at the Boston Globe here.) But few have commented on Mehanna’s charges that he [...]
April 14, 2012 | Filed under
Nation |
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It would be a slam dunk. If there were a Nobel Prize for Tenacity, I would nominate half a dozen organizations that, in the face of years of lost court cases and rapidly graying hair, continue to seek justice for some of the most egregious victims of the Bush/Obama “war on terror.” These legal bulldogs [...]
March 28, 2012 | Filed under
Commentary |
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Barring some totally unforeseen development, key provisions of the USA Patriot Act will be renewed for yet another year – and almost no one will have noticed. Earlier this month, the newly-minted chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, a conservative Republican from Michigan, introduced a bill to extend the law until February [...]
January 18, 2011 | Filed under
Politics |
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Three prominent civil liberties advocates are suing the government to obtain records documenting tens of thousands of incidents of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military. The Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), the American Civil Liberties Union, and the ACLU of Connecticut are charging that military sexual trauma (MST) results from these kinds [...]
December 18, 2010 | Filed under
Law |
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What an incredible era we live in! Earlier this week in federal court, Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter argued against a lawsuit brought by both the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) that the U.S. executive power had the right to kill an American citizen abroad, without review by the judiciary. In his [...]
November 11, 2010 | Filed under
Law |
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The government of Sudan has been miffed that it cannot get off of the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism. It could be because of the history of arbitrary arrests, killings and torture by the administration of Sudan President Omar Al Bashir, as documented in a recent report by Amnesty International. Or it could [...]
September 1, 2010 | Filed under
World |
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As John Yoo’s visit to Mr. Jefferson’s university here in Charlottesville approaches, one is tempted to ask the same question people around here ask about everything: WWJD? What would Jefferson do? Of course, it’s almost taboo among the most serious peace and justice advocates to cite positive precedents from Jefferson, because he was a slave owner. But Jefferson’s views on the structure of a government don’t actually become less admirable (or more) when we remember the horrors he inflicted on the people at Monticello.
I guess I may as well get out front of things here. I’m about to fly to Switzerland to lead a panel on how to change pro-capital punishment attitudes in a country at the Fourth Congress Against the Death Penalty, being sponsored by the United Nations in Geneva. And judging from the stories I’ve been reading about the Transportation Security Administration, or at least its Philadelphia International Airport operation, and the Philadelphia Police who backstop the TSA here, I’m afraid I’m liable to be hauled away as a suspected terrorist before I can get on my flight.
February 12, 2010 | Filed under
Commentary |
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On Friday January 15, 2010, the Pentagon responded to a FOIA request submitted by the ACLU last April, and released (PDF) the first ever list of 645 prisoners held, as of September 22, 2009, in the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan (the Bagram Theater Internment Facility), which has been in operation for eight years.
January 27, 2010 | Filed under
Law |
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