News certainly travels fast, sometimes. While it took the U.S. government two years to reply to a request by a Spanish judge regarding whether or not the U.S. has instigated any investigations or proceedings against six high-level Bush administration figures named in a complaint by the Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners (see PDF), [...]
Despite the commendable efforts of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange to expose the truth about the Iraq war in a responsible manner – that not only would not endanger lives but aim ultimately to save millions of lives, in addition to seeking justice for the countless number of lives already lost [...]
This story was written by Jason Leopold and originally published on Truthout.org. This week, in a burst of stunning hypocrisy, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that imposes sanctions on Iran for human rights abuses and targets eight Iranian government and military officials who are blamed for the torture, abuse and murder of citizens [...]
TPR contributor Jeffrey Kaye is featured in this forthcoming documentary. Doctors of the Dark Side exposes the scandal behind the torture scandal — how psychologists and physicians devised, supervised and covered up the torture of detainees in U.S. controlled military prisons. Writer/Director Martha Davis (Interrogation Psychologists) spent four years investigating the controversy. Lisa Rinzler (Pollock), [...]
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The story of Abu Zubaydah — a Saudi-born Palestinian whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn — has always been absolutely central to the “War on Terror.” Seized in a house raid in Faisalabad, Pakistan on March 28, 2002, he was immediately touted as “al-Qaeda’s chief of operations and top recruiter,” who would be able to “provide the names of terrorists around the world and which targets they planned to hit.” He then pretty much vanished off the face of the earth for four and a half years.
The hope we and this nation had for change we could believe in, and which we still hope will not die, has been diminished by the reality of petty politics, with the “Party of No” and its raucous Teabagger mutation blocking social change for America’s improvement. We really want to be able to write columns about Americans who take care of each other, about leaders who concentrate upon fixing the social problems. But we know that’s only an ethereal ideal. So, we’ll just have to hope that the waters of social justice wear down, however slowly, the jagged rocks of haughty resistance.
Compare Tony Blair’s latest confession to mass murder with Bush’s. The BBC has just aired an interview of Blair in which he was asked whether he would have attacked Iraq even if he had known there were no “weapons of mass destruction” there. Blair replied: “I would still have thought it right to remove him.”
Much has occurred today with regards to Guantanamo Bay and many decisions are yet to come. But there is another milestone worthy of note: Today marks the eighth anniversary of the creation of the legal foundation for the prison and the second-tier justice system established to try terrorism suspects there.
The 15th anniversary of the U.S. ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Torture passed last week with little fanfare and virtually no press attention from the mainstream media here. But according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “U.S. policy continues to fall short of ensuring full compliance with the treaty.” For example, the organization said that an appendix to the Army Field Manual (AFM) can still facilitate cruel treatment of prisoners and detainees at home and abroad.
