Liberal Values: Fomenting fear and defending the rich

Submitted to a Candid World: NYU Law hires a true homophobe - to teach Human Rights

Bildungblog: Clown

3quarksdaily: The Israeli thought-police is here

Deltoid: Warbloggers' predictions of coalition casualities

Oliver Willis: This is your right blogosphere on...the natch

Theoretically, the Obama administration could bring some integrity to the process. But practically speaking? I think the tribunals are too tainted to retain, and I don't pretend to understand why this is happening:

WASHINGTON — - The Obama administration will announce plans Friday to revive the Bush-era military commission system for prosecuting accused terrorists, current and former officials said, reversing a presidential campaign pledge to rely instead on federal courts and the traditional military justice system.

Word of the imminent decision infuriated human rights groups, who argued that any trials under the system created by former President George W. Bush would be widely viewed as tainted and said the Obama administration was duplicating the mistakes of former administration.

[...] White House officials insisted that Obama was not overturning a campaign vow. The president "never promised to abolish" military commissions, an administration official said. However, during his campaign Obama repeatedly called for change.

[...] The administration still intends to prosecute some Guantanamo Bay detainees in federal courts, as Obama had pledged. But officials have concluded that a small number of detainees can be tried only in the military commissions, said a U.S. official familiar with the changes, speaking on condition of anonymity in advance of Friday's announcement.

The administration on Friday also will outline major changes to the military commission system that will be used in future trials.

Gabor Rona, the international legal director of Human Rights First, said military commission trials are unlikely to be seen as legitimate forms of justice.

"Everyone knows the military commissions have been a dismal failure," said Rona. "The results of the cases will be suspect around the world."

But Charles Stimson, a former Bush administration official who oversaw detainee affairs at the Pentagon, applauded Obama's proposal as one that would bring needed change to the military commission system while keeping it intact.

"It is a good start. The closer they get to courts-martial the better," Stimson said. "They should learn from the mistakes the Bush administration made, then proudly defend the military commissions.

"

Do you think it might be okay if we sort of looked into this? I mean, I wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings or keep the country from "moving forward", but isn't murder still a crime?

Or should we sweep this under the rug, too?

United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and followup investigations.

In all, 98 detainees have died while in US hands. Thirty-four homicides have been identified, with at least eight detainees — and as many as 12 — having been tortured to death, according to a 2006 Human Rights First report that underwrites the researcher’s posting. The causes of 48 more deaths remain uncertain.

The researcher, John Sifton, worked for five years for Human Rights Watch. In a posting Tuesday, he documents myriad cases of detainees who died at the hands of their US interrogators. Some of the instances he cites are graphic.

Most of those taken captive were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They include at least one Afghani soldier, Jamal Naseer, who was mistakenly arrested in 2004. “Those arrested with Naseer later said that during interrogations U.S. personnel punched and kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables,” Sifton writes. “Some said they were doused with cold water and forced to lie in the snow. Nasser collapsed about two weeks after the arrest, complaining of stomach pain, probably an internal hemorrhage.”

Another Afghan killing occurred in 2002. Mohammad Sayari was killed by four U.S. servicemembers after being detained for allegedly “following their movements.” A Pentagon document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2005 said that the Defense Department found a captain and three sergeants had “murdered” Sayari, but the section dealing with the department’s probe was redacted.

Perhaps the most macabre case occurred in Iraq, which was documented in a Human Rights First report in 2006.

“Nagem Sadoon Hatab… a 52-year-old Iraqi, was killed while in U.S. custody at a holding camp close to Nasiriyah,” the group wrote. “Although a U.S. Army medical examiner found that Hatab had died of strangulation, the evidence that would have been required to secure accountability for his death – Hatab’s body – was rendered unusable in court. Hatab’s internal organs were left exposed on an airport tarmac for hours; in the blistering Baghdad heat, the organs were destroyed; the throat bone that would have supported the Army medical examiner’s findings of strangulation was never found.”

In another graphic instance, a former Iraqi general was beaten by US forces and suffocated to death. The military officer charged in the death was given just 60 days house arrest.

“Abed Hamed Mowhoush [was] a former Iraqi general beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death,” Human Rights First writes. “In the recently concluded trial of a low-level military officer charged in Mowhoush’s death, the officer received a written reprimand, a fine, and 60 days with his movements limited to his work, home, and church.”

Oh, so his murderer was a church-goer! Never mind, then. I'm sure he's prayed about it since.

At least three men suspected of being gay were gunned down March 20 in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. U.S. forces say they are concerned about the rising number of anti-gay killings in Iraq. (Photo by Bilal Hussein/AP)

Yet another group who has found life even worse than it was under Saddam Hussein. Nice going, BushCo! Installing a theocracy usually does lead to the suppression of human rights - just in case you never noticed:

BAGHDAD - The bodies of two gay men have been found in Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City after a leading cleric repeatedly condemned homosexuality, an Iraqi police official said Saturday.

The killings come after Shiite cleric Sattar al-Battat repeatedly condemned homosexuality during recent Friday prayers, saying Islam prohibits homosexuality. Homosexual acts are punishable by up to seven years in prison in Iraq.

The two men were believed killed Thursday by relatives who were shamed by their behavior, said the official. Police said they suspected the killings were at the hands of family members because no one has claimed the bodies or called for an investigation.

The killings come weeks after Iraqi police found four bodies in late March buried near Sadr City with the words "pervert" and "puppies" written on their chests, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Puppy is a derogatory word used by residents in Sadr City to refer to homosexuals, the official said.

Sadr City, a slum of about two million people, is home to a large majority of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. Al-Sadr's forces launched several uprisings against American forces since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, but fighting ended in Sadr City in May 2008.

"When the Mahdi army was in control, such practices were banned, and homosexuals were afraid of declaring their tendencies," the official said. But that's changed since the Mahdi Army militia cease fire took hold, the official said. The official said some people claim a coffee shop in Sadr City has become a hangout for gay men.

Sheik Ammar al-Saadi, a cleric at al-Sadr's office, denied any involvement by the Mahdi army in the killings. He said the Mahdi Army was only urging people to stop practicing homosexuality.

"Such people have brought shame on Sadr city people," he told The Associated Press. "The blame falls on the security forces who do little to combat this phenomenon or to stop the flow of pornography materials into Iraq."

Amnesty International recently condemned the Iraq government's plan to execute 128 prisoners, many of whom were imprisoned for being gay.

The right-wingers today are gleeful over this article in today's L.A. Times, equating it with the Bush administration's use of rendition:

Reporting from Washington -- 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 on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

[...] But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."

Cernig addresses the difference over at Newshoggers:

"Illegal Rendition" as practised by the Bush administration did not involve notifying the IRC, which is why it kicked up a storm in Europe - because it was a crime involving secretly disappearing people into secret prisons. Renditions which include notifying the correct international body, used only for the purpose of getting wanted people before a proper court, and which are fully in compliance with international and domestic law including (from the Obama executive order):

the Fifth and Eighth Amendments to the United States Constitution; the Federal torture statute, 18 U.S.C. 2340 2340A; the War Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. 2441; the Federal assault statute, 18 U.S.C. 113; the Federal maiming statute, 18 U.S.C. 114; the Federal "stalking" statute, 18 U.S.C. 2261A; articles 93, 124, 128, and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. 893, 924, 928, and 934; section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, 42 U.S.C. 2000dd; section 6(c) of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Public Law 109 366; the Geneva Conventions; and the Convention Against Torture.

Which would also, inter alia, prohibit rendition to a foreign nation for torture "off the books"...

...That isn't illegal. Nor is it preserving torture. The relevant part of the remit of the Special Task Force established by Obama's executive order to examine all US detention and interrogation practices makes that quite clear:

to study and evaluate the practices of transferring individuals to other nations in order to ensure that such practices comply with the domestic laws, international obligations, and policies of the United States and do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture or otherwise for the purpose, or with the effect, of undermining or circumventing the commitments or obligations of the United States to ensure the humane treatment of individuals in its custody or control.

That is just normal extra-territorial rendition as practised by the law-abiding world. On this issue, at least, Lefties can sleep easy after all (after they've worried about Obama's war crime of airstrikes indiscriminately killing civilians in Pakistan and his complicity in Bush's torture crimes by apparently ruling out prosecutions of torturers). Some Rightwing pundits should go take a valium and lie down for a while, though.

Noted Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan is believed to have been arrested in Iran. He recently went back to Iran on a visit and subsequently disappeared. Jerome at MyDD notes that "Hossein has been at the forefront of the huge Iranian-Persian blogosphere, advocating for the use of the internet as a means for social and political reform in Iran, but he's also made a lot of enemies on both sides, for his non-conformist viewpoints."

Josh Wingrove at the Globe and Mail writes:

...there has been no trace of him since Oct. 30. Iranian reports surfaced soon after that date, citing intelligence sources, saying he had been arrested and charged with spying on behalf of Israel.

Yesterday, through Toronto-based blogger and family friend Nazli Kamvari, Mr. Derakhshan's family said he had been arrested at his residence in Iran on Nov. 1. The family has spoken to him four times since then, each time in a phone call lasting less than one minute, Ms. Kamvari said. But family members haven't heard from Mr. Derakhshan for 13 days, and are now becoming worried.

"Every time he's been like, 'I'm okay,' " said Ms. Kamvari, 29. "They're very confused."

It's no more likely that Derakhsan is an Israeli spy than that I am. Mark MacKinnon writes:

I met Hossein once, and yes it was in Jerusalem. But he walked the streets proudly wearing an "I Love Tehran" T-shirt (probably the first one ever worn in Israel) in an over-the-top effort to challenge stereotypes and tackle the misconceptions that exist in both Tel Aviv and Tehran.

Yes, he was a critic of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Yes, he openly admired the Israel and the West. But he was also fiercely proud of his Iranian heritage, and called Iran the freest country in the Middle East after Israel. Though himself an atheist, he expressed admiration for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

I heartily endorse MacKinnon's call for Derakhsan's release.

On a more personal note; I've written a lot about the false narratives surrounding Western debate over Iran's nuclear program and other accusations designed to inflame Western opinion towards armed intervention there. But occasions like this make me more aware that I am a reluctant apologist for a truly odious regime on the subject. It's a theocracy disguised with some democratic trappings, even the moderates aren't moderate at all by my usual standards and it violently represses it's own people in their free expressions of greivance or dissent. None of which are sufficient reasons to go to war with Iran rather than any number of other similiar regimes. The anti-Iran narrative in the West which centers around its nuclear ambitions is circumstantial at best and often entirely fabricated by groups who want the US to change the Iranian regime by force for their own selfish reasons. Some so that they themselves can be the new dictators, others for the even less palatable reason of ideology. I can't sit idly by and watch such a push for war with Iran on false pretenses even if I do find the Iranian regime odious. Two wrongs really don't make a moral right.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

December 07, 2008 C-SPAN
Former President Jimmy Carter and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay presented recommendations for a new United States human rights agenda for the new Obama administration. The agenda was developed with human rights leaders from around the world. See more CSPANJunkie Videos here