Human Rights Glance
A landmark congressional report released today sheds new light on the coordination among the Bush White House and other high level government officials in the creation and implementation of torture policies. The report was released by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) and Ranking Member John McCain (R-AZ) after being declassified by the government and is a result of the committee’s two-year long investigation into the Department of Defense’s (DOD) role in the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.
“Once again, we are presented with clear-cut evidence that the Bush administration’s highest ranking officials were not only complicit in the use of torture, but were actively engaged in its implementation. It is now time to act on this evidence,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “We can no longer pretend there is any doubt that crimes were committed and the Justice Department should respond accordingly. No one is above the law. An independent prosecutor must be appointed to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation.”
Congressional Report Reaffirms Involvement Of High Level Bush Officials In Torture Policies
Dozens of Prisoners Held by CIA Still Missing, Fates Unknown
Last week, we pointed out that one of the newly released Bush-era memos inadvertently confirmed that the CIA held an al-Qaeda suspect [1] named Hassan Ghul in a secret prison and subjected him to what Bush administration lawyers called "enhanced interrogation techniques." The CIA has never acknowledged holding Ghul, and his whereabouts today are secret.
But Ghul is not the only such prisoner who remains missing. At least three dozen others who were held in the CIA's secret prisons overseas appear to be missing as well. Efforts by human rights organizations to track their whereabouts have been unsuccessful, and no foreign governments have acknowledged holding them.
Report: Abusive tactics were used to find Iraq-al Qaida link
The Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
No evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.
In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Past Use
In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned.
This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.
Binyam Mohamed: MI5 officer gave false evidence in Guantánamo detainee case
Lawyers for the government have admitted that a senior MI5 officer gave false evidence to the high court in the case of former Guantánamo Bay prisoner Binyam Mohamed.
'IDF soldiers forced to take part in medical experiment'
Less than a month after an expert panel accused the defense establishment of "grave ethical failures" in testing an experimental anthrax vaccine on hundreds of soldiers, Israel Radio revealed Sunday that soldiers from the Duhifat Battalion were forced to participate in another experiment 15 years ago.
Israel Railways changes its story over dismissal of Arab employees
Israel Railways changed its story Sunday over the dismissal of at least 40 Arab employees, telling a court that mistakes made by the employees prompted it to introduce new employment conditions.
Attorney Tawfiq Tibi, who represents about 20 of the employees who petitioned the court, said the dismissals were a case of double discrimination.
"They discriminated against them firstly by firing them, and the second time by preventing those who did not serve in the army from applying for the job," Tibi said.
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