Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Truth to Power
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Designer Taser
Taser International Unveils Newest Civilian Stun Device- Amnesty International USA Renews Call for Independent Safety Review – Update from Co-host Dalia Hashad
New York Campaign for Telephone Justice- CCR victory
Families in New York with a loved one in prison won a long-awaited victory on January 8, 2007 when Governor Spitzer committed to end the burdensome, back door tax on collect calls to inmates’ families.
Since 1996, families of inmates have had no choice but to pay phone rates 630% the normal consumer rates to speak with their loved ones. And for the past 11 years, New York State has been collecting nearly 60 percent of the profits of these charges, $16 million in 2005. Family members have complained that the exorbitant phone rates forced them to choose between maintaining their relationship with a loved one and putting food on the table.
Governor Spitzer declared that instead of raising funds via a backdoor tax imposed on the family members of inmates, the state will pay for mandated services in prisons using the State’s General Fund. Families should begin realizing savings in early April, when the General Fund will assume costs for these mandates services, including health care and family-based programs.
Guest – Annette Dickerson – coordinator for the NY Campaign for Telephone Justice on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights
Guest – Rachel Meeropol – CCR staff attorney also working on the case.
Egyptian cleric kidnapped off the streets of Italy by the CIA. An Italian judge has indicted more than 20 CIA agents on the kidnapping and rendering of Egyptian cleric. Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, set down on paper his version of his abduction in Italy and imprisonment in Egypt. The 6,300-word letter, written in Arabic script and smuggled out of Egypt’s Torah Prison by a visitor, is now in the hands of Italian prosecutors, who say they plan to offer it to the court as his testimony in absentia. Read letter here.
Guest – Jumana Musa – Amnesty International USA Advocacy Director for Human Rights and International Justice
Judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar
Last Wednesday Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said that the government should delay the execution of Saddam Hussein’s half brother and former intelligence chief, Barzan Ibrahim, and Judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court. Both were sentenced to death with Saddam. Talabani said the delay would allow the government to quote ‘examine the situation,’ without further elaborating. The two were found guilty, along with the former Iraqi leader, of involvement in killing 148 Shiite Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt on the former leader in the northern town of Dujail. Ibrahim and al-Bandar were originally scheduled to be executed with Saddam on Dec. 30. Their executions were postponed, however, until after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which ended a week ago.
Lawyers from the Partnership for Civil Justice, working with former Attorney General and attorney for Saddam Hussein, Ramsey Clark have been working feverishly since late December to halt the execution.
Guest – attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard with the Partnership for Civil Justice to Law and Disorder.
Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Supreme Court, Torture, Truth to Power
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Guantanamo – Five Years
January 11th marks five years of detainment for the more than 400 people at Guantanamo. For the full hour, Law and Disorder co-host and President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner takes listeners through the history and chronology of the US involvement at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp. Michael Ratner begins with the US acquiring the 4500 square mile base near a harbor at the southeastern end of Cuba.
Guantanamo – A Law Free Zone – Haitian Camps – Read more
In the last quarter of the 20th century, the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base was used to house Cuban and Haitian refugees. In the early 1990s, it held refugees who fled Haiti after military forces overthrew democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These refugees were held in a detainment area called Camp Bulkeley until United States District Court
Storming The Court – We hear a clip from an interview with attorney and author Brandt Goldstein. Before Guantanamo Bay, Cuba became notorious for its human rights violations against Muslims, it was the holding center for thousands of HIV-positive Haitian refugees. More than ten years ago a team of Yale law students and activists took up this cause. They worked victoriously to stop the US government from detaining these refugees indefinitely at Guant?namo, without charges or access to counsel.
David Hicks – Australian prisoner held at Guant?namo Bay, Cuba. He’s been detained for more than five years as an “unlawful combatant” and thus, it was claimed, outside the normal protections of U.S. law and those provisions of the Geneva Conventions which are specific to soldiers of an official military organization. His trial before a U.S. military commission was due to begin in November 2005. However, proceedings were cancelled following the Supreme Court Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling invalidating the constitutionality of the commission process.
Bounty Hunter – U.S. PSYOPS distributed flyers and leaflets
How did prisoners get to Guantanamo?
Many Guantanamo prisoners were rounded up by bounty hunters and sold to the U.S. It’s unknown how many were victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the days during and following the Afghan invasion, the U.S. military blanketed parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan with flyers encouraging people to turn in suspects, in return for large sums of money. “Get wealth and power beyond your dreams,” read one flyer. “You can receive millions of dollars helping the anti-Taliban forces catch al-Qaeda and Taliban murderers.”
See more PSYOPS leaflets/flyers here
How other prisoners arrived at GTMO
Uiger Muslims Transferred From Guantanamo To Albania – Recently, the Uiger Muslims were quietly sent to Albania to a larger compound. It was explained to Law and Disorder that in Albania, the Uigers can move about freely within the compound and cannot leave. We play a clip from the January 2006 interview with attorney Sabin Willet.
We play a clip from a Law and Disorder interview with Tausif Paracha. His Uncle, Saifullah Paracha, 58 was “kidnapped” and is detained in Guantanamo and Tausif’s cousin Uzair Paracha, 24 is detained in one of New York’s worst prisons. You can read more about this case at www.freeparachas.org
Mark P. Denbeaux – Seton Hall Report – One of most comprehensive reports of who is at Guantanamo.
Describe Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
Gita Guitierezz – attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights defending Guantanamo Bay detainees gives listeners a first hand description of the camp.
Torture
Co-host Michael Ratner describes his experience of first learning that the US military was involved with torturing detainees. Torture, including waterboarding and sleep deprivation.
Tipton Three is the name given to three young men from Tipton, United Kingdom, who were held in extrajudicial detention for 2 years in Guant?namo Bay detainment camps
Evidence of Torture – Gita Guitierezz – in an interview last November we listen to a clip where Gita describes how her client Mohamed Mani Ahmad al-Kahtani. was sleep deprived and tortured.
Torture and Waterboarding; ancient practice – Henri Alleg, Author of The Question – We listen to a clip of Henri Alleg describing waterboarding. He was revived then brought to the brink of death, then revived again. An similar brutality and sadism often described by prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Hosts Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith interview Henri Alleg a French journalist living in Paris. He supported Algerian independence during the French Algerian War (1954-1962). He was arrested by French paratroppers during the Battle of Algiers in June 1957 and interrogated.
Fighting back in the Courts, Congress and in the Streets
The effort to get Guantanamo closed down and to get prisoners the rights they’re entitled under International Law and the Constitution. It’s a difficult fight explains co-host Michael Ratner but the opposition is growing.
We hear clips from a demonstration against the Guantanamo Prison Camp in Herald Square and also from Amnesty International’s anti-torture rally in Portland, Oregon, recorded from interviews by co-host Dalia Hashad. Amnesty International staff members and activists who gathered to speak out, listen and share their stories.
Take Action Now – Fight Back – Thursday January 11, 2007
Witness Against Torture – Fight Back – January 11, 2007 Thursday: The 5 year anniversary of the first prisoners being brought to Guant?namo. March, Press Conference and Nonviolent Direct Action in Washington, DC. Endorsed by Center for Constitutional Rights, CodePink, Network of Spiritual Progressives, Pax Christi USA, School of Americas Watch, United for Peace and Justice and other groups such as FIDH and Reprieve.
Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Happy New Year from Law and Disorder – Co-host Michael Ratner delivers update on the state of the new US Congress, the Iraq War and Guantanamo.
Venezuelan Election Observers
Ming Alterman, Ellen Meyers and Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach have returned from Venezuela after observing December 3rd elections where voting machines actually print out a paper receipt. The last report from CNE, National Electoral Council from Venezuela at gave Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias the victory with 61.35% of the total counted so far, 75.3%. His counterpart, Manuel Rosales have received 38.39%.Shortly after the partial results were given, Hugo Ch?vez showed up in the Balc?n del Pueblo (The People’s Balcony) in the presidential palace to celebrate his victory and address his followers.
Ming Alterman – Latin American Scholar
Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach – Evaluated whether elections were free and fair; that is whether the election produced an outcome expressing the will of the Venezuelan people.
Ellen Meyers is a founder and senior vice president of Teachers Network, a non-profit organization–by teachers, for teachers–with a 25-year track record of success, dedicated to improving student learning in public schools nationally and internationally. Ellen has written numerous articles that have appeared in major media outlets and has presented at conferences across the country. She has been a newspaper columnist, film producer, political campaign manager, election monitor, community board member, and foundation and federal grants advisor. She has a weekly radio show on WHCR, Harlem Community Radio.
Spoken Word Performance – Katrina
Professor Louie and Fast Eddie deliver a powerful spoken word performance on the devastation of Katrina. These Brooklyn natives poets/musicians weave stream of consciousness style prose with conga. They performed live in the studio at WBAI. To order CDs by Professor Louie and Fast Eddie – call Free Brooklyn Now at 718-768-8728
Uneven Distribution of Wealth?
Michael Smith talks with Professor Rick Wolff, formerly the head of the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts and currently the NASDAQ professor of Economics at the New School University and Catherine Albisa Executive Director of the National Economics and Social Rights Initiative – NESRI. Albisa is also an attorney specializing in the implementation of human rights standards in the United States. She is the former director of the Human Rights in the US program at the Center for Economic and Social Right and was the Associate Director of the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School.
Both guests discuss their reactions to and the implications of the recent 16.2 billion dollar bonus that the investment banking house of Goldman Sachs announced just before Christmas.
More than $50 million went to the Goldman Sachs Chairman alone. Pfizer, the drug company, paid a “severance package” of $200 million to its just-resigned chief executive. Many other large corporations acted similarly. All this is legal, given the laws and rules that corporations win from their political “allies.” Indeed, the latest ruling by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allows corporations to obscure what they pay top executives (the New York Times, December 27, 2006, page C1, called it “a victory for corporations”).
Read Story Here by Professor Rick Wolff. More stories – here and here.
Civil Liberties, Death Penalty, Guantanamo, Torture, Truth to Power, Uncategorized
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Eric Schlosser on the United States Prison System
We’ve covered in depth on Law and Disorder the US run prison industry abroad, from Guantanamo Bay prison, Cuba, Bagram prison in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib in Iraq. These are the exports of one of the most highly profitable businesses in the United States. The prison industrial complex in this country has reached record breaking occupancy. Nearly 2.1 million Americans are behind bars, the majority of them nonviolent offenders, they’re usually poor, many have substance abuse problems and many have are mentally ill. This according to exhaustive research by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser who spoke at Bluestockings Bookstore in New York about his compendium on the American Prison system.
Law and Disorder caught up with Eric during this talk and we listen to the second part of his one hour speech. In his talk he warns our society of the perils of a profit driven penal system and backs his research with well-documented facts and staggering statistics.
Muhammad Salah Case – Update
Hosts talk with Salah’s attorney Michael Deutsch on the latest in the case involving a Palestinian businessman accused of funding Hamas in 1993. His defense argues he was tortured and his confessions coerced.
The government also called to the witness stand former New York Times reporter Judith Miller. Law and Disorder hosts fill in the background of this reporter who was fired from the NY Times for writing numerous stories backing the Bush administration’s war campaign chant, “weapons of mass destruction.” Miller was allowed to witness Israeli agents interviewing Salah in 1993. She testified a month ago that Salah seemed comfortable and that he boasted about Hamas operations.
Guest – Michael Deutsch, Muhammad Salah’s attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago.
The Mishandled Lethal Injection of Florida death row inmate Angel Nieves Diaz
Angel Diaz was executed by lethal injection for killing a Miami topless bar manager 27 years ago. He was given a rare second does of deadly chemicals as he took more than twice the usual time to succumb. Needles that were supposed to inject drugs in the 55 year old man’s veins were instead pushed through the blood vessels and into the surrounding soft tissue.
The error in Diaz’s execution led Florida Governor Jeb Bush to suspend all executions. Bush still defends the death penalty itself and rejects calls for its abolition. In a separate case, a federal judge extended a moratorium on executions in California, declaring that its method of legal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Those are just the latest challenges to lethal injection, which is the preferred method in 37 states. Missouri’s injection method, similar to California’s was declared unconstitutional last month by a federal judge.
Guest – Kristin Houle with the Amnesty International Program to Abolish the Death Penalty
Lynch Mobs and the Killing State
Lynchings. That word alone is at the root of racism in the United States. Those who may regard lynching as a shameful part of the past need only read the book “From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State” edited by Austin Sarat and Charles Ogletree to realize that state-sanctioned executions are sanitized forms of lynching justified by society.
Professors Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat have assembled a lucid and intelligent work in which essays from sociologists, historians, criminologists and lawyers weave toegether a social history that starkly reveals how this country’s death penalty is rooted in lynchings.
Racism informs both kinds of killings. The 985 lives lost to official lynchings in the United States since the practice resumed in 1976 symbolize according to one of the book’s contributors, a much broader and enduring culture of American apartheid.
Guest – Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. His books include Mercy on Trial: What it Means to Stop an Execution.
Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Supreme Court, Torture, Truth to Power
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Co-hosts Dalia Hashad and Michael Ratner discuss the Hamden Case, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and Habeas Corpus.
Download/Listen to this segment [15 MB]
Lt. Ehren Watada, the First Commissioned Officer Refuses Iraq Deployment Orders
Lieutenant Ehren Watada is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse to deploy to what many believe a historic illegal war in Iraq. He is a First Lieutenant in the United States Army, a member of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division Stryker Brigade Combat Team, who in June 2006 publicly refused to deploy to Iraq, saying that he believed the war to be illegal and that it would make him party to war crimes.
Watada is charged with one count of missing troop movement and two counts of speaking contemptuously of the president. The contempt charges were dropped in November.
Recently, a US military prosecutor is seeking testimony from Truthout reporters to prove that Watada engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer, directly related to disparaging statements the Army claims Watada made about the legality of the Iraq War during interviews with Truthout. Ehren Watada faces six years in prison.
Today we speak with Carolyn Ho, the mother of Lt. Ehren Watada, the first officer to publicly refuse to serve in Iraq. Ho is on a tour throughout the country bringing awareness and garnering support for her son’s case.
We also play Lieutenant Watada’s entire speech delivered in August 2006 at the Veterans for Peace National Convention. Just as Watada took the stage and began to speak, more than 50 members of Iraq Veterans Against the War filed in behind him. Watada, surprised by the support, draws a deep breath and begins his speech.
Communities Reeling From Police Shooting “Massacre”
Tens of thousands of protesters silently marched down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Saturday as seasonal shoppers looked on. Many held banners and called for the resignation of New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. All of this protesting the fatal police shooting of 23-year-old Sean Bell last month on his wedding day. Bell’s friend and fellow shooting victim Trent Benefield led the march in a wheelchair pushed by the Rev. Al Sharpton.
The death of unarmed Sean Bell, killed by undercover police in a hail of 50 bullets in Queens, New York outraged communities and sent shockwaves through the country. As the investigations into the case proceed, the fallout from the shooting raise new questions about racial profiling and stirred distrust among police and minority communities.
Guest – Roger Wareham attorney and political activist for nearly three decades. He’s a member of the December 12th Movement, organizing in the Black and Latino community around human rights violations, particularly police brutality.
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) – This Convention against Racial Discrimination commits States parties to change national laws and policies that create or perpetuate racial discrimination and aims, among other things, to promote racial equality, which allows the various ethnic groups to enjoy the same social development. The Convention against Racial Discrimination defines racial discrimination as: “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”
