It's a familiar story for Haitians - last in, first out for the hemisphere's poorest, least wanted, and most abused people here and at home. Most recently it was highlighted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials announcing the resumption of over 30,000 deportations to a nation reeling from poverty, repression, despair, the devastation from last summer's storms, and occupation by UN paramilitary Blue Helmets - since 2004, illegally there for the first time ever to support and enforce a coup d'etat against a democratically elected president, at the behest of Washington.
On December 9, ICE resumed deportations after halting them in September following summer storms that battered the country leaving 800,000 people without food, clean water, other essentials, and for around 70,000 their homes. ICE spokeswoman Nicole Navas announced: "We fully expected to resume deportation flights when it was safe. And we made a determination that it was appropriate to (do it now) based on the conditions on the ground....The individuals being returned have final orders of removal and the necessary travel documents" - even though advocates say things are worse in Haiti, not better, with The Miami Herald said it was "the worst humanitarian disaster (for) Haiti in 100 years"
Read More At Global Research
Saturday, February 28, 2009
African Migrants Drown Off Yemen
At least 45 people have drowned after a boat carrying them from Somalia across the Gulf of Aden capsized in deep waters off Yemen. The boat, transporting 46 migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia, capsized on Friday night about 95km from Mukalla, a south-eastern Yemeni port, the Yemeni Interior Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
It is the second accident involving migrants off Yemen in about a week: On February 20, six African migrants drowned and 11 were reported missing and presumed dead after traffickers pushed dozens of passengers overboard in deep waters off Yemen's south-eastern coast.Smugglers forced the 52 passengers, 40 Somalis and 12 Ethiopians, into the sea after they spotted Yemeni coast guards onshore.
Read More At Al Jazeera
It is the second accident involving migrants off Yemen in about a week: On February 20, six African migrants drowned and 11 were reported missing and presumed dead after traffickers pushed dozens of passengers overboard in deep waters off Yemen's south-eastern coast.Smugglers forced the 52 passengers, 40 Somalis and 12 Ethiopians, into the sea after they spotted Yemeni coast guards onshore.
Read More At Al Jazeera
Friday, February 27, 2009
Khmer Rouge Torture Centre Survivor Talks
A child survivor of the Khmer Rouge's largest torture centre has emerged from obscurity to tell his story on the eve of a crimes against humanity trial in Cambodia. Norng Chan Phal, now a 39-year-old father of two, said he was eight when the Vietnamese stormed into Phnom Penh to end the Khmer Rouge reign of terror.He was held at the notorious S-21 prison where some 16,000 men, women and children were brutally tortured and executed.Phal came forward last week after a film from Vietnam was screened showing Vietnamese troops entering the prison, also known as Tuol Sleng. The man who ran the prison, Kaing Guek Eav, is on trial at a UN-backed tribunal. Better known as Duch, he is the first of five former Khmer Rouge leaders to stand trial for crimes against humanity. He faces charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and homicide while he ran the centre.
Read More At Sky News
Iraq's Queer Underground Railroad
Today in Iraq, a modern version of the underground railroad is saving the lives of gay people who are fleeing death squads. It is providing safe houses in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, and is smuggling lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people to neighbouring countries, where it helps them apply for United Nations humanitarian protection.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, homophobia and the terrorisation of LGBT people has got much worse. The western invasion of Iraq in 2003 ended the Baathist dictatorship. But it also destroyed a secular state, created chaos and lawlessness and allowed the flourishing of religious fundamentalism. This campaign of terror is sanctioned by Iraq's leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2005, he issued a fatwa urging the killing of LGBT people in the "worst, most severe way" possible.
This is the same Sistani who was praised by President Bush as a "leading moderate". The British government concurred. We hosted him in Britain for medical treatment. He was anti-Saddam, so the west backed him, even after he issued his murderous religious edicts. Although the general security situation has improved in Iraq, for LGBT people it has deteriorated sharply. Systematic assassinations of queers are being orchestrated by police and security agents in the interior ministry.
Read More At the Guardian
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, homophobia and the terrorisation of LGBT people has got much worse. The western invasion of Iraq in 2003 ended the Baathist dictatorship. But it also destroyed a secular state, created chaos and lawlessness and allowed the flourishing of religious fundamentalism. This campaign of terror is sanctioned by Iraq's leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2005, he issued a fatwa urging the killing of LGBT people in the "worst, most severe way" possible.
This is the same Sistani who was praised by President Bush as a "leading moderate". The British government concurred. We hosted him in Britain for medical treatment. He was anti-Saddam, so the west backed him, even after he issued his murderous religious edicts. Although the general security situation has improved in Iraq, for LGBT people it has deteriorated sharply. Systematic assassinations of queers are being orchestrated by police and security agents in the interior ministry.
Read More At the Guardian
Uigher Detainees in Guantanamo Likely To Be Resettled in Washington DC
Seven years after Hozaifa Parhat was detained near Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains and sent to Guantanamo Bay, Parhat and 16 fellow Chinese Uighurs appear likely to be the first of the 245 prisoners still at the U.S. military prison in Cuba to be set free under the Obama administration.President Obama has made closing the camp a priority, and federal courts have so far ruled that the Uighur detainees present no threat to the United States.But freed to where? China is insisting that the Uighurs be sent home to face trial for separatist activities and is denouncing any other country accepting them.
"The Uighurs live primarily on the wild northwestern steppes of China in a region officially known as Xinjiang but called Turkestan by the Uighurs. Beijing has come under widespread criticism from the United States and others for its repression of rights and religious freedom there. People familiar with the talks within the administration said there was little chance the White House would agree to return the Uighurs to China, given the widespread belief that they might be tortured or executed if sent back.
Read More At LA Times
"The Uighurs live primarily on the wild northwestern steppes of China in a region officially known as Xinjiang but called Turkestan by the Uighurs. Beijing has come under widespread criticism from the United States and others for its repression of rights and religious freedom there. People familiar with the talks within the administration said there was little chance the White House would agree to return the Uighurs to China, given the widespread belief that they might be tortured or executed if sent back.
Read More At LA Times
Yoo Memos Gave Retroactive Cover
A Justice Department inquiry has found that the Bush administration’s legal opinions justifying the torture of “war on terror” detainees were hastily drafted after one prisoner was already subjected to waterboarding according to several sources familiar with the still-classified report.
The implication of the finding is that John Yoo and other lawyers for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel violated ethical standards by collaborating with senior White House officials to create legal cover for violating anti-torture and other federal statutes after the fact, rather than providing objective advice for future actions.
As more becomes known about the genesis of those OLC opinions, the evidence increasingly points to a different reality, that Bush and his top aides essentially worked with Yoo and the OLC to fix the legal opinions around their desired policy, even to justify actions that had already occurred.
Read More At Consortium News
The implication of the finding is that John Yoo and other lawyers for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel violated ethical standards by collaborating with senior White House officials to create legal cover for violating anti-torture and other federal statutes after the fact, rather than providing objective advice for future actions.
As more becomes known about the genesis of those OLC opinions, the evidence increasingly points to a different reality, that Bush and his top aides essentially worked with Yoo and the OLC to fix the legal opinions around their desired policy, even to justify actions that had already occurred.
Read More At Consortium News
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Cambodia genocide Trial Begins
A notorious torture centre boss went before Cambodia's genocide tribunal today for its first trial over the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime more than three decades ago.
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, who headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh is charged with crimes against humanity and is the first of five defendants scheduled for long-delayed trials by the UN-assisted tribunal. Duch, driven to the hearing in a bulletproof car from a nearby detention centre, intently followed the proceedings in a courtroom packed with some 500 people.
The 66-year-old is accused of committing or abetting a range of crimes including murder, torture and rape at S-21 prison formerly a school where up to 16,000 men, women and children were held and tortured, before being put to death.
Read More At The Guardian
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, who headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh is charged with crimes against humanity and is the first of five defendants scheduled for long-delayed trials by the UN-assisted tribunal. Duch, driven to the hearing in a bulletproof car from a nearby detention centre, intently followed the proceedings in a courtroom packed with some 500 people.
The 66-year-old is accused of committing or abetting a range of crimes including murder, torture and rape at S-21 prison formerly a school where up to 16,000 men, women and children were held and tortured, before being put to death.
Read More At The Guardian
US 'War on Terror' Eroded Rights Worldwide
Washington's "war on terror" after the Sept. 11 attacks has eroded human rights worldwide, creating lingering cynicism that the United Nations must now combat, international law experts said on Monday.
Mary Robinson, who was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, said the United States caused harm with some of the ways it responded.
"Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and repeal abusive laws and policies," the former Irish president said, warning that harsh U.S. detentions and interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba gave a dangerous signal to other countries that could easily follow suit.
The report found that many undemocratic states have referred to U.S. counter-terrorism practices to justify their own abuses, a trend Robinson said was particularly alarming.
Read More At CommonDreams.org
Mary Robinson, who was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, said the United States caused harm with some of the ways it responded.
"Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and repeal abusive laws and policies," the former Irish president said, warning that harsh U.S. detentions and interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba gave a dangerous signal to other countries that could easily follow suit.
The report found that many undemocratic states have referred to U.S. counter-terrorism practices to justify their own abuses, a trend Robinson said was particularly alarming.
Read More At CommonDreams.org
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Lawsuit Sheds More Light on Terror War Abuses
Three human rights groups have released documents that they say reveal close cooperation between the U.S. Defence Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in rendering terrorism suspects to secret prisons, creating 'ghost prisoners' by concealing their identities from the Red Cross, and delaying their release to counter negative publicity about their treatment at Guántanamo Bay.
Close to a thousand pages of documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and New York University's Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ). The suit, dating from 2004, seeks the disclosure of government documents relating to secret detention, extraordinary rendition, and torture.
At a press conference earlier this week, the groups revealed that the newly released documents confirm the existence of 'black site' prisons at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and in Iraq; affirm the Defence Department (DOD's) cooperation with the CIA's "ghost" detention programme; and show one case where the DOD sought to delay the release of Guantánamo prisoners who were scheduled to be sent home in order to avoid bad press.
Read More At IPS
Close to a thousand pages of documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and New York University's Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ). The suit, dating from 2004, seeks the disclosure of government documents relating to secret detention, extraordinary rendition, and torture.
At a press conference earlier this week, the groups revealed that the newly released documents confirm the existence of 'black site' prisons at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and in Iraq; affirm the Defence Department (DOD's) cooperation with the CIA's "ghost" detention programme; and show one case where the DOD sought to delay the release of Guantánamo prisoners who were scheduled to be sent home in order to avoid bad press.
Read More At IPS
Newly Declassified Defense Department Documents Indicate the Deaths of Several Captives While Interrogated by US Officials in 2002
Two newly released pages from the Church Report focused on the deaths of two prisoners at the U.S. military base in Bagram, Afghanistan. One prisoner died on Dec. 4, 2002, and another six days later.
The Church report said the interrogators allegedly went beyond authorized techniques by employing “sleep deprivation, the use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequences are imminent for him and/or his family, and beating.” The report added that a private contractor, David Passaro, conducted an interrogation that allegedly led to another detainee death.
The ACLU, which has carried on a long legal battle to expose the Bush administration’s secret policies on detainees, released the two pages from the Church report and other documents on Wednesday, adding to an expansive body of material covering thousands of pages.
Read More At Consortium News
The Church report said the interrogators allegedly went beyond authorized techniques by employing “sleep deprivation, the use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequences are imminent for him and/or his family, and beating.” The report added that a private contractor, David Passaro, conducted an interrogation that allegedly led to another detainee death.
The ACLU, which has carried on a long legal battle to expose the Bush administration’s secret policies on detainees, released the two pages from the Church report and other documents on Wednesday, adding to an expansive body of material covering thousands of pages.
Read More At Consortium News
Torture Account by Missing Rights Defense Lawyer Gao Zhisheng
Human Rights in China (HRIC) has received an account by rights defense lawyer Gao Zhisheng (高智晟) from a reliable source, detailing his kidnapping and torture in September 2007.
Gao was sentenced to three years in prison in December 2006 on charges of “inciting subversion” for writing a series of open letters to President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao that were critical of the Chinese government’s suppression of Falun Gong. He received a five-year suspension of his prison term and was under heavy surveillance.
In September 2007, he was detained for several weeks after sending an open letter to the U.S. Congress denouncing the human rights situation in China and describing his and his family’s treatment by security forces.
Most recently, he was reported to have been forcibly taken away by more than 10 security police from his home in Shaanxi in the early morning of February 04, 2009, and has not been heard from since.HRIC received Gao’s account, “Dark Night, Dark Hood, and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia,” translated by an anonymous source. The account details violent beatings, repeated electric shocks to his genitals, and having his eyes burnt by lit cigarettes.
Read More At Human Rights in China
Gao was sentenced to three years in prison in December 2006 on charges of “inciting subversion” for writing a series of open letters to President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao that were critical of the Chinese government’s suppression of Falun Gong. He received a five-year suspension of his prison term and was under heavy surveillance.
In September 2007, he was detained for several weeks after sending an open letter to the U.S. Congress denouncing the human rights situation in China and describing his and his family’s treatment by security forces.
Most recently, he was reported to have been forcibly taken away by more than 10 security police from his home in Shaanxi in the early morning of February 04, 2009, and has not been heard from since.HRIC received Gao’s account, “Dark Night, Dark Hood, and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia,” translated by an anonymous source. The account details violent beatings, repeated electric shocks to his genitals, and having his eyes burnt by lit cigarettes.
Read More At Human Rights in China
Former Gitmo Guard Recalls Abuse, Climate of Fear
Army Pvt. Brandon Neely was scared when he took Guantanamo's first shackled detainees off a bus. Told to expect vicious terrorists, he grabbed a trembling, elderly detainee and ground his face into the cement — the first of a range of humiliations he says he participated in and witnessed as the prison was opening for business.
Neely has now come forward in this final year of the detention center's existence, saying he wants to publicly air his feelings of guilt and shame about how some soldiers behaved as the military scrambled to handle the first alleged al-Qaida and Taliban members arriving at the isolated U.S. Navy base.
After the Sept. 11 attacks and the swift U.S. military response in Afghanistan, the Bush administration had little time to prepare for the hundreds of prisoners being swept up on the battlefield. The first arrivals were housed in cages that had been used for Haitian migrants almost a decade earlier.
Read More At Yahoo News
Neely has now come forward in this final year of the detention center's existence, saying he wants to publicly air his feelings of guilt and shame about how some soldiers behaved as the military scrambled to handle the first alleged al-Qaida and Taliban members arriving at the isolated U.S. Navy base.
After the Sept. 11 attacks and the swift U.S. military response in Afghanistan, the Bush administration had little time to prepare for the hundreds of prisoners being swept up on the battlefield. The first arrivals were housed in cages that had been used for Haitian migrants almost a decade earlier.
Read More At Yahoo News
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Under Obama, Same Stance on Rendition Suit
President Obama's Justice Department signaled in a San Francisco courtroom Monday that the change in administrations has not changed the government's position on secrecy and the rights of foreign prisoners - and that lawsuits by alleged victims of CIA kidnappings and torture must be dismissed on national security grounds.
Read More At SF Chronicle
Read More At SF Chronicle
Monday, February 9, 2009
UK government suppressed evidence on Binyam Mohamed Torture Because MI6 Helped His Interrogators
The Government suppressed evidence on the torture of terror suspect Binyam Mohamed because the documents reveal that MI6 helped his interrogators. Material in a CIA dossier on Mr Mohamed that was blacked out by High Court judges contained details of how British intelligence officers supplied information to his captors and contributed questions while he was brutally tortured, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.
Mr Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian, was granted refugee status in Britain in 1994. He was picked up in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, rendered to Morocco and Afghanistan, tortured and then sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2004. All terror charges against him were dropped last year.
Two High Court judges last week said they wanted to release the full contents of a CIA file on his treatment but they held back seven paragraphs of information after David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, argued that it could compromise intelligence sharing with the US.
The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said.
Read More At The Telegraph
Mr Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian, was granted refugee status in Britain in 1994. He was picked up in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, rendered to Morocco and Afghanistan, tortured and then sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2004. All terror charges against him were dropped last year.
Two High Court judges last week said they wanted to release the full contents of a CIA file on his treatment but they held back seven paragraphs of information after David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, argued that it could compromise intelligence sharing with the US.
The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said.
Read More At The Telegraph
Immigration Crackdown Overwhelms Judges
Over the past few years, the Bush administration's immigration crackdown funded thousands more agents to arrest immigrants and hundreds more government lawyers to prosecute them.
But immigration judges — who adjudicate deportation and asylum hearings — have been left out of this expansion, and they say they're struggling under a staggering caseload.
Marks, who heads the National Association of Immigration Judges, says she can definitely feel like Lucy Ricardo on the chocolate-factory line. But with many defendants seeking refuge from persecution, the frenetic work pace is hardly a comedy.
"For some people, these are the equivalent of death penalty cases, and we are conducting these cases in a traffic court setting."
Read More At NPR
But immigration judges — who adjudicate deportation and asylum hearings — have been left out of this expansion, and they say they're struggling under a staggering caseload.
Marks, who heads the National Association of Immigration Judges, says she can definitely feel like Lucy Ricardo on the chocolate-factory line. But with many defendants seeking refuge from persecution, the frenetic work pace is hardly a comedy.
"For some people, these are the equivalent of death penalty cases, and we are conducting these cases in a traffic court setting."
Read More At NPR
Raising Awareness on War on Women in DRC
The top UN official for humanitarian affairs is traveling through the war-ravaged eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo today, where nearly 900 people have been killed and unknown numbers of women raped since the beginning of the year.
After visiting a hospital, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes expressed his shock at the large number of rapes that continue to take place. According to the United Nations, tens of thousands of women in the Congo have been brutally raped as part of the ongoing war.
Last fall, Eve Ensler worked with UNICEF to organize events in two cities in the DRC, where survivors of sexual violence publicly spoke out against violence and about their experiences for the first time. Seven women told their stories in front of community members and government and UN officials:
SURVIVOR 1: [translated] They took my husband and hit him and tied him and tortured him and took him I don’t know where. They went and killed him wherever they had taken him. And then all seven men raped me. Then the neighbors heard what happened and found me unconscious. They looked at me and saw all my insides outside of my body.
SURVIVOR 2: [translated] They started taking the clothes off my children, and I told them, “Please, excuse me, you can’t do that. Instead of raping my children while I watch, just kill me first.”
SURVIVOR 3: [translated] A woman is supposed to respected. We are not objects. Women get pregnant and breast-feed you. How come you disrespect me today in public?
SURVIVOR 4: [translated] The authorities of this country, how do you look at this rape issue and remain silent?
SURVIVOR 1: [translated] We are suffering because of rape. Rape should stop. It must stop.
SURVIVOR 5: [translated] I am speaking so that women who are hiding and others who have AIDS can come out, so they can be taught how to live.
Read More At Democracy Now!
After visiting a hospital, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes expressed his shock at the large number of rapes that continue to take place. According to the United Nations, tens of thousands of women in the Congo have been brutally raped as part of the ongoing war.
Last fall, Eve Ensler worked with UNICEF to organize events in two cities in the DRC, where survivors of sexual violence publicly spoke out against violence and about their experiences for the first time. Seven women told their stories in front of community members and government and UN officials:
SURVIVOR 1: [translated] They took my husband and hit him and tied him and tortured him and took him I don’t know where. They went and killed him wherever they had taken him. And then all seven men raped me. Then the neighbors heard what happened and found me unconscious. They looked at me and saw all my insides outside of my body.
SURVIVOR 2: [translated] They started taking the clothes off my children, and I told them, “Please, excuse me, you can’t do that. Instead of raping my children while I watch, just kill me first.”
SURVIVOR 3: [translated] A woman is supposed to respected. We are not objects. Women get pregnant and breast-feed you. How come you disrespect me today in public?
SURVIVOR 4: [translated] The authorities of this country, how do you look at this rape issue and remain silent?
SURVIVOR 1: [translated] We are suffering because of rape. Rape should stop. It must stop.
SURVIVOR 5: [translated] I am speaking so that women who are hiding and others who have AIDS can come out, so they can be taught how to live.
Read More At Democracy Now!
Friday, February 6, 2009
Myanmar's Unwanted Boat People
According to the UNHCR, at least 230,000 Rohingya now live a precarious, stateless existence in Bangladesh alone, having fled their homes in Myanmar's North Rakhine state. Those who have not fled are restricted from travel inside the country, while human rights groups say Rohingya face abuses by the Myanmar military that make the recent crackdown on democracy protests seem pale in comparison.Gabriele Marranci, professor of anthropology of Islam at the National University of Singapore, told Al Jazeera the main reason the Rohingya are "unwanted" in Thailand, and also facing the prospect of deportation from Indonesia, is that they "lack strategic value".
"There seems to be a consensus among countries neighbouring Myanmar to also treat the Rohingya as a stateless group which has no place in their societies," he said.
Read More At Al Jazeera
Waterboarding In 1920's American South
Waterboarding was sometimes used in the Deep South to torture African-Americans and to extract false confessions to alleged crimes. And when it emerged in an appeal as long ago as 1926, even the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled it categorically “a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country,” and “barbarous.” They over-turned a guilty verdict for murder by an African-American man against a white man because such methods invalidated any notion of a reliable confession.
Read More At SF Bay View
Read More At SF Bay View
Immigrant Prisoners Stage Uprising in Texas
Details are still sketchy of an inmate uprising at a privately-operated federal detention facility in West Texas last Saturday. Reports in the U.S. and Mexican press suggest the revolt, involving hundreds prisoners at the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos, Tex., erupted after complaints of poor medical treatment went unheeded.
Initial accounts report the uprising spanned two days, with inmates setting fires and possibly even seizing guards’ radio communication equipment.The uprising is now declared over, and as many as 700 former Pecos prisoners are reportedly confined at another detention center in Sierra Blanca, Tex., because sleeping areas were destroyed during Saturday’s rebellion. Many of the inmates at the Pecos prison were held on immigration law violations.
Managed by the Florida-based Geo Group, the Pecos facility is among many immigrant detention centers in the United States currently run by private companies. The jail has a capacity of 2,400 inmates, according to information posted on Geo Group’s Web site.
Read More At AlterNet
Initial accounts report the uprising spanned two days, with inmates setting fires and possibly even seizing guards’ radio communication equipment.The uprising is now declared over, and as many as 700 former Pecos prisoners are reportedly confined at another detention center in Sierra Blanca, Tex., because sleeping areas were destroyed during Saturday’s rebellion. Many of the inmates at the Pecos prison were held on immigration law violations.
Managed by the Florida-based Geo Group, the Pecos facility is among many immigrant detention centers in the United States currently run by private companies. The jail has a capacity of 2,400 inmates, according to information posted on Geo Group’s Web site.
Read More At AlterNet
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Slain Exile Detailed Cruelty of the Ruler of Chechnya
For more than two years, Mr. Israilov, a Chechen in exile, had formally accused Russia’s government of allowing a macabre pattern of crimes in Chechnya. Even by the dark norms of violence in the Caucasus, his accusations were extraordinary.A rebel fighter turned bodyguard of Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Chechnya’s current president, Mr. Israilov had access to the inner ring of Chechen power. Mr. Kadyrov’s career has been sponsored by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who as president lifted him from obscurity with unwavering Kremlin support.
In written legal complaints, Mr. Israilov described many brutal acts by Mr. Kadyrov and his subordinates, including executions of illegally detained men. One executed man, Mr. Israilov said, had been beaten with a shovel handle by Mr. Kadyrov and Adam Delimkhanov, now a member of Russia’s Parliament. Another prisoner, the defector said, was sodomized by a prominent police officer and at Mr. Kadyrov’s order put to death.
Mr. Israilov said he and others had been tortured by Mr. Kadyrov, who amused himself by personally giving prisoners electric shocks or firing pistols at their feet.
Read More At The New York Times
MPs to Hear Claims That Britain Colluded in Torture of Suspects
Last year, the Guardian reported a story relating to a number of suspects arrested in Pakistan at the request of British authorities between 2003 and 2007. The men say they were repeatedly tortured by agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), before being questioned by MI5.
One of the alleged victims, Rangzieb Ahmed, from Manchester, says that in 2006 he was beaten, whipped, deprived of sleep and had three fingernails extracted by ISI agents at the Rawalpindi centre before being interrogated by two MI5 officers.
Read More At The Guardian
One of the alleged victims, Rangzieb Ahmed, from Manchester, says that in 2006 he was beaten, whipped, deprived of sleep and had three fingernails extracted by ISI agents at the Rawalpindi centre before being interrogated by two MI5 officers.
Read More At The Guardian
Sunday, February 1, 2009
CIA Prisons Emptied, But Rendition Remains
The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base in southeastern Cuba. But even while dismantling these discredited programs, President Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool intact.
Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.
Read More At SF Chronicle
Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.
Read More At SF Chronicle
Long Cleared of Terrorism Charges, Uyghurs Languish in Gitmo Prison and Albanian Exile
Uyghur prisoners at Guantanamo have long been determined to be not guilty of terrorism. But seventeen of these ethnic Muslim Chinese are still imprisoned at Guantanamo after almost eight years. Five were forcibly resettled in Albania, isolated and away from their families.
Twenty-two of Uyghers ended up in Guantanamo, five were released in mid-2006 to Albania, and the remaining seventeen continue to languish in detention because no country wants to resettle them. Sabin Willett, an attorney for the Uyghurs, sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Attorney General-designate Eric Holder, urging them to immediately release the Uyghurs and resettle them in the United States.
Read More At Democracy Now
Twenty-two of Uyghers ended up in Guantanamo, five were released in mid-2006 to Albania, and the remaining seventeen continue to languish in detention because no country wants to resettle them. Sabin Willett, an attorney for the Uyghurs, sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Attorney General-designate Eric Holder, urging them to immediately release the Uyghurs and resettle them in the United States.
Read More At Democracy Now
Financed by the British Taxpayer, Brutal Torturers of the West Bank
The horrific torture of hundreds of people by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is being funded by British taxpayers.An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has found that the forces responsible get £20million a year from the UK.
The victims – some left maimed – are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it.They are targeted because the Fatah party, which runs the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA) on the West Bank, is the bitter rival of Hamas, which controls the war-torn Gaza strip.
Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) gave £76million in all to the PA last year for ‘security sector reform’ and fostering the rule of law. Yet the PA forces are carrying out torture, and the authority ignores judges’ orders to release political detainees. Last month at least 30 journalists, teachers and students were arrested – as the crackdown on Hamas was praised by a senior Israeli defence official as a necessary ‘iron fist policy’.
Read More At The Daily Mail
The victims – some left maimed – are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it.They are targeted because the Fatah party, which runs the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA) on the West Bank, is the bitter rival of Hamas, which controls the war-torn Gaza strip.
Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) gave £76million in all to the PA last year for ‘security sector reform’ and fostering the rule of law. Yet the PA forces are carrying out torture, and the authority ignores judges’ orders to release political detainees. Last month at least 30 journalists, teachers and students were arrested – as the crackdown on Hamas was praised by a senior Israeli defence official as a necessary ‘iron fist policy’.
Read More At The Daily Mail
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