Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Iraq War, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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FBI Lies And Patriot Act Abuse
Angry lawmakers are considering setting limits on the Patriot Act after the inspector general of the Justice Department had found the FBI abusing an administrative subpoena called “national security letters.” The FBI used this subpoena to gather phone, bank and credit information on thousands of citizens without court oversight. They also made quote unusual contracts with 3 major phone companies to provide records without any legal process.
Guest – Lisa Graves, Deputy Director of the Center for National Security Studies.
“The Chief Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) informed Congress that the court has no objection to sharing with the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) the orders authorizing wiretapping of people in the US who have been subject to warrantless wiretapping by the administration. Attorney General Gonzales initially refused to share that information with the Committee, stating during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he needed to consult with his “principal,” President Bush. On January 31, 2007, the Attorney General announced that certain documents held by the FISC, such ? including investigators’ applications for permission to spy and court orders ? would be given to “some” lawmakers, such as Senator Patrick Leahy and Senator Arlen Specter, but not all Senators of the SJC or other concerned Members.” – – – Center for National Security Studies.
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Australian Guantanamo Bay Detainee David Hicks Update
David Hicks was the Center for Constitutional Rights’ first client and in the first group of detainees taken to Guant?namo. He is Australian and is now the first person charged before the reconstituted Military Commissions Act. He was charged earlier but those commissions were held illegal by the Supreme Court in the Hamdan case. He has been charged with one count of material aid to terrorism, which is not usually viewed as a war crime. To the extent any crimes are triable by military commissions they must be war crimes. Unlike the UK, the Australia government has willingly gone along with this trial and has not insisted on Hicks’ return.
Guest – Josh Dratel, civilian attorney for David Hicks.
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ACLU Sues Department of Homeland Security For Detaining Children in Prison-Like Conditions.
The Department of Homeland Security and the T. Don Hutto Immigration Detention Facility is facing a federal lawsuit filed by the The American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of children confined at the facility in Tyler, Texas. The ACLU claims adults and children at the center, which used to be a prison, live in jail-like conditions and that the children are not given adequate schooling or medical care.
Read more
Guest – Lisa Graybill, legal director for the ACLU of Texas.
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Guantanamo Bay Lawyers Attacked and Misquoted.
Newspapers run op eds that heavily criticized lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees. Criticism such as they’re quote “keeping the US military from doing its job and repatriating detainees back into action fighting the United States.
Guest – Scott Horton, Chair of International Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association and adjunct Professor of Law at Columbia University
Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Torture, Truth to Power
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Today on Law and Disorder we run excerpts from an event sponsored by the Center for Constitutional Rights. From Pinochet to Rumsfeld: Accountability of US officials for torture. Speakers include Janis Karpinski, former US Army Brigadier General at Abu Ghraib prison, Iraq. She was the commander of three large US- and British-led prisons in Iraq in 2003, eight battalions, and 3400 Army reservists. In October 2005 she published an account of her experiences, One Woman’s Army, in which she claims that the abuses were perpetrated by contract employees trained in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay and sent under orders from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and that her demotion was political retribution.
Also on this program, Law and Disorder co-host Michael Ratner president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Scott Horton, chair of the International Law Committee, New York Bar Association. We hear about the long term effects of torture from another perspective. Kate Porterfield, Ph.D. who works with torture survivors describes the health consequences of torture.
In the wake of CCR’s groundbreaking filing of war crimes charges against Donald Rumsfeld, this Center for Constitutional Rights event aimed to examine different strategies for holding international officials accountable for their actions. We’ll hear an exploration of the devastating effects of torture techniques employed by the U.S. Government. Certainly not for the faint of heart but important in beginning to understand how torture used in the name of the people in the United States must end immediately.
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.
Extraordinary Rendition, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, Uncategorized
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Update – Donald Rumsfeld Resigns
Examining the Foundation of a Police State: Tracking the Disappeared
In this second part of this four-part series, we take a look through the eyes and experiences of our guest attorneys representing “enemy combatants” indefinitely detained in this country and abroad. You’ll hear their first hand accounts of deplorable conditions and torture techniques implemented under the umbrella of twisted legislation.
Rather than setting up a narrow intelligence-based effort to prosecute the perpetrators of a criminal action, the Bush administration exploited the tragic events of 9/11 as an excuse to cast a broad net used to justify the demonization of all Muslims. This, as the use of CIA torture techniques sent shock waves rippling through the conscience of all Americans. You will get the sense of how the US government has institutionalized racial profiling, detention prisons, and torture in its fervent effort to implement the so called war on terror.
In the third part of this series we’ll look at the crackdown of dissent in this country, including how the government has set up a “terrorist” database to categorize and target domestic activists. As attorneys on the front lines we bring you exclusive cases of domestic surveillance of protestors. Our final episode will be devoted to the unjust and illegal war in Iraq. We believe that taken together, the four-part series reveals how the plans for a police state and martial law are being cemented. Law and Disorder will call attention to this emergence by bringing you the voices of strength and opposition from activists, authors and attorneys who are well informed, not silent and standing up against the strangling of democracy.
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States government has held hundreds of men at Guantanamo Bay as part of its ‘global war on terrorism.’ However, the secrecy and questions about the legality of the imprisonments have drawn concern from lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups. The indefinite detentions without trial are seen by many as violations of the Geneva Conventions, they inspire anti-Americanism, and infringe upon the very foundations of our civil rights.
Guest – Gita Guitierezz – attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights defending Guantanamo Bay detainees. Gita has made more than 10 visits to Guantanamo Bay and has represented prisoners such as Mohamed Mani Ahmad al-Kahtani.
Jarallah Al-Marri
Al-Marri, a 32-year-old father of three, and Qatar citizen. He was taken into custody during an early morning raid in Pakistan in December of 2001, just months after the U.S. attack on Afghanistan. He then spent the next several weeks at the US Air Force Base in Bagram, Afghanistan. Al-Marri has since spent four years in Guantanamo Bay military prison mostly in solitary confinement. For nearly two years his only human contact has been with interrogators, prison guards and our guest Jonathan Hafetz.
Guest – Jonathan Hafetz, associate counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. He is an expert on the history of habeas corpus. His articles and legal briefs on habeas corpus are widely cited by scholars and courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Hafetz’s legal practice focuses on the detention of enemy combatants and other issues of executive power.
Hafetz says Al-Marri interrogators slammed his head into a concrete wall, hit him with a 2-by-4 foot piece of wood, and forced him to remain in physically painful positions for long periods of time.
Jose Padilla
Jose Padilla was first detained in 2002 at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport after he returned from a trip to Pakistan. At the time Attorney General John Ashcroft warned the government had “disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive “dirty bomb.” President Bush declared he was an enemy combatant who could be jailed in solitary confinement indefinitely without charges – even though he was a U.S. citizen. Only recently have the “dirty bomb” charges been dropped.
Guest – Andy Patel, one of the attorneys representing Jose Padilla.
