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| 2006/10/21-24 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:44899 Activity:low |
10/21 More evidence of Bush Administration War Crimes revealed:
http://www.csua.org/u/h9x (news.yahoo.com)
\_ War Crimes is what the winners do to the losers.
\_ I don't see any evidence of war crimes on that page. Let
me know when your FOIA request turns up the Haliburton
contract for building "showers" in gitmo that includes a
cost savings provision based on the fact they will be
using pows as slave labor.
\_ So the defense of Bush's misdeeds has moved from "he's
better than Saddam" to "he's better than Hitler."
Interesting.
\_ Abuse of Power != War Crime. Maybe he has abused
the power of the Presidency, maybe he hasn't; but
whatever he has done, I just don't see it rising
to the level of a war crime.
to the level of a war crime. I think that calling
the President's actions war crimes serves only to
stifle real debate over administration's handling
of the WOT.
\_ As opposed to saying "Bush is totally better than
Hitler!!!!1", which fosters mature debate? Come on.
No, I'm not OP, and no I have not used the word "war
crime".
\_ You "just don't see it" but others, including the
USSC and Alberto Gonzalez, did. Looks like your
position is the weaker one. There is a law in the US,
called the "War Crimes Act" that forbids grave
breaches of the Geneva Convention. The USSC just
ruled the prisons at Gitmo are covered under
Art 3 of the Geneva Convention. Was the torture
described in the article a "grave breach"? I am not
sure, and I guess you must be some kind of expert
on International Law to be so sure that is not.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4999734 |
| www.csua.org/u/h9x -> news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061021/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_detainees_4 AP US jailed man once tortured by Taliban By MICHAEL J SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer Sat Oct 21, 8:11 AM ET WASHINGTON - Abdul Rahim insists he's an apolitical student who fled a strict father. But he's fallen into a black hole in the war on terror in which first the Taliban and then the United States imprisoned him as an enemy of the state. Afghanistan in January 2000, Rahim says al-Qaida leaders burned him with cigarettes, smashed his right hand, deprived him of sleep, nearly drowned him and hanged him from the ceiling until he "confessed" to spying for the United States. Syria into custody in January 2002 after the Taliban fled his prison. Accusing him of being an al-Qaida terrorist, US interrogators deprived him of sleep, threatened him with police dogs and kept him in stress positions for hours, he says. Rahim's story is one of several emerging from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay as defense lawyers make bids to free their clients while the Bush administration tries to use a new law to lock them out of federal courts. President Bush 's plans for commissions to try detainees, Bush obtained a new law from Congress barring federal courts from hearing appeals for release by any alien "properly detained as an enemy combatant." The Justice Department told district and appellate judges this week they no longer have jurisdiction to hear dozens of such pending cases. Other detainees whose lawyers filed new evidence in US District Court motions this month include: _Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese charity worker arrested at 1:30 am July 18, 2002, in his Peshawar, Pakistan, apartment. Co-workers swear he was a hospital administrator with no connection to terrorists. A dissenting US Army major on the panel that reviewed the unclassified and secret evidence against him called it "unconscionable" to detain him because some employees of the same charity may have supported terrorist ideals. The man who hired him swears that was the case, but he is accused of being a member of a terrorist group. The lawyers say he has been mistaken for a commander of that terror group, named Chaman Gul, also held at Guantanamo. Wax's staff traveled to Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates to gather dozens of sworn statements from co-workers, relatives, fellow inmates and people who knew these detainees but haven't spoken to them in years. These newly filed accounts substantiate details of the detainees' denials that they were terrorists. "These clients are not enemy combatants," Wax said in an interview. The new law "does not apply to people who are not enemy combatants," he said. Wax said it would be unconstitutional to apply the jurisdiction-stripping bill retroactively to existing cases. And he said the Supreme Court has ruled before that it has the final say over its jurisdiction in these so-called habeas corpus petitions for release from custody. Following President Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus for prisoners of war, the high court in 1866 set a man free after finding he was not a prisoner of war, Wax noted. "There is a significant amount of evidence, both unclassified and classified, which supports continued detention of these detainees and others at Guantanamo." Now 28, Rahim, buttressed by testimony from friends and relatives, says he wound up in Afghanistan in a bid to escape his father, a strict teacher of Islamic education who objected to his borrowing money outside the family for a college trip. With his father holding his passport, he tried futilely to get from his home in the United Arab Emirates to Europe or Canada. Finally a friendly diplomat got him deported to Afghanistan where he and others say he hoped to be declared a refugee and moved to Europe by international aid agencies. He says the Taliban conscripted him and sent him against his will to the Al Farouq terrorist training camp. When he tried to leave 18 days later, they imprisoned him, he says. John Ashcroft said US forces found five videotapes in the ruined Afghan home of bin Laden aide Mohammed Atef -- one of the men Rahim says directed his torture. Ashcroft said the tapes show young men delivering "martyrdom messages from suicide terrorists" and identified one as "Abd Rahim." Rahim's attorney Stephen Sady said any Taliban tapes of Rahim "were the product of torture" and no different from false confessions Sen. "After two years the Americans came and saved me from the prison," Rahim told US officers. "I told them about the videotape the Taliban made of me ... it created confusion to the point that the Americans believed I was working with al-Qaida." President Bush is seen after signing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which sets new standards expediting the interrogation and prosecution of terror suspects, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. |
| www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4999734 Michael Isikoff Newsweek May 17 - The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that US officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue. January 25, 2002, memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales obtained by NEWSWEEK. It urges President George Bush declare the war in Afghanistan, including the detention of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, exempt from the provisions of the Geneva Convention. In the memo, the White House lawyer focused on a little known 1996 law passed by Congress, known as the War Crimes Act, that banned any Americans from committing war crimes-defined in part as "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions. Noting that the law applies to "US officials" and that punishments for violators "include the death penalty," Gonzales told Bush that "it was difficult to predict with confidence" how Justice Department prosecutors might apply the law in the future. This was especially the case given that some of the language in the Geneva Conventions-such as that outlawing "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhuman treatment" of prisoners-was "undefined." One key advantage of declaring that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters did not have Geneva Convention protections is that it "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act," Gonzales wrote. Click here to read Colin Powell's response The best way to guard against such "unwarranted charges," the White House lawyer concluded, would be for President Bush to stick to his decision-then being strongly challenged by Secretary of State Powell- to exempt the treatment of captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from Geneva convention provisions. "Your determination would create a reasonable basis in law that (the War Crimes Act) does not apply which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution," Gonzales wrote. The memo-and strong dissents by Secretary of State Colin Powell and his chief legal advisor, William Howard Taft IV-are among hundreds of pages of internal administration documents on the Geneva Convention and related issues that have been obtained by NEWSWEEK and are reported for the first time in this week's magazine. A Secret History: How Torture Took Root The memos provide fresh insights into a fierce internal administration debate over whether the United States should conform to international treaty obligations in pursuing the war on terror. Administration critics have charged that key legal decisions made in the months after September 11, 2001 including the White House's February 2002 declaration not to grant any Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters prisoners of war status under the Geneva Convention, laid the groundwork for the interrogation abuses that have recently been revealed in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Isikoff on war crimes memo May 18: Newsweek's Michael Isikoff explains how White House counsel Alberto Gonzales' memo to President Bush on tough new measures of handling prisoners could leave US officials vulnerable to charges of war crimes. MSNBC As reported in this week's magazine edition, the Gonzales memo urged Bush to declare all aspects of the war in Afghanistan-including the detention of both Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters-exempt from the strictures of the Geneva Convention. In the memo, Gonzales described the war against terorrism as a "new kind of war" and then added: "The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians, and the need to try terrorists for war crimes such as wantonly killing civilians." But while top White House officials publicly talked about trying Al Qaeda leaders for war crimes, the internal memos show that administration lawyers were privately concerned that they could tried for war crimes themselves based on actions the administration were taking, and might have to take in the future, to combat the terrorist threat. The issue first arises in a January 9, 2002, draft memorandum written by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) concluding that "neither the War Crimes Act nor the Geneva Conventions" would apply to the detention conditions of Al Qaeda or Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. The memo includes a lengthy discussion of the War Crimes Act, which it concludes has no binding effect on the president because it would interfere with his Commander in Chief powers to determine "how best to deploy troops in the field." ") But while the discussion in the Justice memo revolves around the possible application of the War Crimes Act to members of the US military, there is some reason to believe that administration lawyers were worried that the law could even be used in the future against senior administration officials. One lawyer involved in the interagency debates over the Geneva Conventions issue recalled a meeting in early 2002 in which participants challenged Yoo, a primary architect of the administration's legal strategy, when he raised the possibility of Justice Department war crimes prosecutions unless there was a clear presidential direction proclaiming the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the war in Afghanistan. The concern seemed misplaced, Yoo was told, given that loyal Bush appointees were in charge of the Justice Department. "Well, the political climate could change," Yoo replied, according to the lawyer who attended the meeting. "The implication was that a new president would come into office and start potential prosecutions of a bunch of ex-Bush officials," the lawyer said. He added that "it is difficult to predict with confidence what actions might be deemed to constitute violations" of the War Crimes Act just as it was "difficult to predict the needs and circumstances that could arise in the course of the war on terrorism." Such uncertainties, Gonzales wrote, argued for the President to uphold his exclusion of Geneva Convention provisions to the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees who, he concluded, would still be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessarity, in a manner consistst with the principles" of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. In the end, after strong protests from Powell, the White House retreated slightly. In February 2002, it proclaimed that, while the United States would adhere to the Geneva Conventions in the conduct of the war in Afghanistan, captured Taliban and Qaeda fighters would not be given prisoner of war status under the conventions. It is a rendering that Administration lawyers believed would protect US interrogators or their superiors in Washington from being subjected to prosecutions under the War Crimes Act based on their treatment of the prisoners. |
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