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Combatant Status Review Tribunals

Co-hosts Michael Ratner and Dalia Hashad discuss the legal efficacy of these tribunals for Guantanamo Bay detainees. From the Amnesty International USA site – “In the “war on terror”, detainees in US custody have been treated as potential sources of information first and criminal suspects a distant second. However, this secondary aspect is now coming into focus. Plucked from years of secret or virtually incommunicado detention, a few people held in the US Naval Base at Guant?namo Bay in Cuba are facing trial by military commission.”


Combatant Status Review Tribunals Proceedings:

  • Detainees do not receive the presumption of innocence.
  • Detainees do not get access to legal advice.
  • Detainees are not entitled to access to the evidence against them, or in their favor.
  • Hear-say evidence is allowed to be used against the detainees.
  • The use of evidence acquired through coercive interrogation is allowed, there is no protection against self-incrimination.
  • Evidence acquired through the torture of other suspects was allowed.


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Architect of Torture

Co-host Michael Ratner adds perspective to the real reasons US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign immediately.

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Law and Disorder sit down with authors Giuliana Sgrena and Anthony Arnove.

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It’s two years since U.S. forces gunned down Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari in Iraq, and recently Washington is refuses to hand over the U.S. soldier charged in the case to be tried in Italy. Calipari the number two man in the Italian military intelligence was killed while escorting Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena after securing her release from a month-long abduction in Iraq.

Giuliana Sgrena has written about her experience in, “Friendly Fire: The Remarkable Story of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq.” As a veteran foreign correspondent for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto she has reported frequently from Afghanistan and Iraq. Sgrena joins Michael Ratner and Michael Smith today on Law and Disorder. We are also joined by editor and author Anthony Arnove who recently wrote the new book Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal.

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Left Forum 2007 – CCR Executive Director Vince Warren

We play part of a speech by the Center for Constitutional Rights Executive Director Vince Warren. He spoke at the Left Forum earlier this month on the state of current state civil liberties in this country. The panel, moderated by our own Michael Steven Smith examined the long term implications of eroding civil liberties and the laws that have allowed a surveillance police state. We will hear more speakers from this years Left Forum in the weeks to come.