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Updates:
- Extremely Rare: Court Moves To Rehear Case of Canadian Rendition Victim Maher Arar
- NYC’s Plan To Track Everything That Moves
- Outrage At NYPD Plan To Track Vehicles
- NYPD Travel To London For Security Tips
- Detention Camp Set Up For DNC Protesters
- UK: Zero Privacy
CCR Campaign: The First 100 Days
Vincent Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights talks with hosts about the CCR campaign titled the First 100 Days. Warren says there is a clear opportunity for the next president to steer things in a new direction, to repudiate the executive orders that have been put in place by George W. Bush, and by the sidestepping of the Justice Department. A lot of the reversal can be done without Congress because they are executive orders. The First 100 Days campaign will put this information(PDF) in the hands of the people to make the next administration accountable. Law and Disorder will have more programming on the First 100 Days.
Guest – Vincent Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights
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20 Years Later: Dozens of Black Men Remain Behind Bars In Chicago After Being Tortured
According to the People’s Law Office in Chicago, at least 24 African American men are still serving sentences for crimes they say they confessed to after being tortured by Chicago Police officers. The happened when the Chicago police precinct was under Commander Jon Burge in the early 70’s to the 1992. Jon Burge is a Vietnam Vet who is said to have brought back torture to Chicago. People’s Law Office Attorney Flint Taylor says Burge shot through the ranks all the way to commander, primarily by leading a band of torturers. They used methods such as electric shock, dry submarino, (suffocating with bags)
Flint Taylor on the Daryl Cannon Torture Case:
- Flint Taylor represents torture victim Daryl Cannon who the city has admitted they tortured and settled for 3 thousand dollars twenty years ago before any evidence of the systemic torture came out.
- Under Seventh Circuit law if there’s a conspiracy to cover up the evidence in a civil case to show fraud then you can bring the case again. The PLO brought the case in 2005 and the city of Chicago still refuses to settle the case and they’re pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars in that case.
- They’re over the 10 million dollar mark and pumping more in to the defense of Commander Jon Burge. We’ve calculated the pensions that have been paid to Burge and the 25 other implicated torturers; its over 25 million because statute of limitations have no remedy.
The Peoples Law Office attorneys are also battling to get the remaining men off of death row and to get them hearings. They’re also battling to get the states attorney and DA to Richard Daily former Chicago mayor and Richard Devine to the carpet because they had evidence to prosecute Burge criminally, thus allowing torture ring to continue.
The Committee of Torture in the United Nations has connected the torture brought back to the U.S. in Chicago with torture in Guantanamo and other black sites around the world.
Guest – G. Flint Taylor, attorney at the Peoples Law Office.Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern University School of Law and a founding partner of the People’s Law Office.
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Beyond Guantanamo Speech: Pardiss Kebriaei
We hear from Pardiss Kebriaei, Staff Attorney, Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative, at the Center For Constitutional Rights who spoke at the event titled, Beyond Guantanamo.
Now that key rulings issued by the Supreme Court affirm the constitutional rights of Guantánamo detainees to challenge their detention in the federal courts, what does the future hold for Guantanamo detainees and the rule of law? In the cases of Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States, the June 2008 Supreme Court ruling has undone the attempts of the Bush administration and Congress to suspend the fundamental right of habeas corpus. Closing Guantanamo is on top of the list of actions in the First 100 Days for the next U.S. President’s Administration.
Among the speakers:
- Vincent Warren, Executive Director, CCR,
- Stephen Abraham, Guantánamo whistleblower, attorney, and U.S. Army reserve officer who served on a military “combatant status review tribunal”
- Baher Azmy, Professor of Law, Seton Hall University and habeas counsel to Guantánamo detainees
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