From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian

Roger Fitch Esq • June 21, 2010

Supreme Court wonderland

In a decision the NY Times called disgraceful,
the Supreme Court denied certiorari to the Canadian Maher Arar in his civil damages case against US officials who rendered him to Syria as he transited JFK airport in 2002.

Arar was tortured there for 10 months.

The Canadians exonerated Arar, paid him millions in damages and apologised for their role in his rendition. The US, however, refused to take any action.

The Mounties are now investigating the US

Arar’s lawyer, David Cole (pic), has more to say.

CLICK ON THE TITLE FOR MORE........

You Can Run But You Cannot Hide

Since our president thinks that holding certain criminals responsible for their crimes distracts us from the future it is important that we the people do everything we can to hold those men and women responsible for their actions....In that vein is the attached complaint to the TEXAS STATE BOARD OF EXAMINERS OF PSYCHOLOGISTS regarding the conduct of one Dr. James Elmer Mitchell.

Click on the title for the complaint.

Thank you Charles Gittings at PEGS for this posting.

The "sideshow"

Last week the judge in my remaining clients case reluctantly recused himself in a most injudicious order. For some reason the judge, who sat on my recusal motion for months, decided that my motion...as opposed to the conduct of the DOJ was the real problem.

The talking dog has more here:

http://www.thetalkingdog.com/archives2/001460.html

NEW ACLU DOCUMENTS FROM FOIA REQUEST

Yesterday the ACLU received documents from the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice in response to a FOIA request on Bagram, particularly those that pertain to early Bush era global detention and release policy/including criteria for Gitmo transfers (2002-2004). This chilling phrase in the 2004 “Global Screening Criteria for Detainees” policy is actually similar to ones that I have seen being used in unclassified documents related to my own clients: commanders could “only transfer to Guantanamo those [enemy combatants] whose exploitation require[d] the specialized capabilities available at Guantánamo.”

You can find the documents here: http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2010_06_08_DOJ_Release.pdf. There is an index at the beginning of the PDF.

CLICK ON THE TITLE FOR SOME of the interesting points highlighted by others....

Experiments in Torture

Experiments in Torture by Physicians For Human Rights is the first report to reveal evidence indicating that CIA medical personnel allegedly engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture. In their attempt to justify the war crime of torture, the CIA appears to have committed another alleged war crime—illegal experimentation on prisoners.

Click on the title to read the report......

And click here to read Scott Horton's take ....

Guantanamo censors....

When I was down at Guantanamo a few weeks ago I had a little time on my hands and now that they actually have wireless at the luxurious accommodations that we lawyers are forced to stay at I did a little web browsing to my favorite websites. Only problem was that one of those websites was blocked by the thugs that run the place: A Canadian website called Galloping Beaver. Last week I sent a short email to the Beaver congratulating them for being controversial enough to be banned from the base and they followed with this post.

For those of you who have been thinking in the back of your mind that you can always flee to Canada when things get (more) unbearable here you might want to check out the Beaver for a reality check....things are not all that great up north when it comes to democracy either.

LOOKING FORWARD.....

Former President Bush bragged this past week about his policy of waterboarding those suspected of terrorism (key word being "suspected")....but of course even though waterboarding is torture and torture is against the law (or was against the law) in this here country of mine the current powers to be have decided to turn their collective cheeks....which of curse is easy for them since it was not their cheeks that were smacked....

Of course Bush only spoke about his joy in waterboarding KSM.....I wonder how he will respond to questions about waterboarding Abu Zubaydah (some 100 times) as the government has now been forced to admit Abu Z was not al-Qaeda or taliban....just some smuck who had the misfortune to be captured by my criminal Government.......

anyway Scott Horton has more here.

Task Force Report

Obama set up the Task Force shortly after taking office to review the gitmo detainees and to make recommendations as to whether they should be released, prosecuted or detained forever without charge. The task force completed its job in January and they just got around to releasing the report....click on the title to review.

As for my two clients- Mr. Al-Ghizzawi was cleared for release and ultimately released in March of this year to the country of Georgia. Razak Ali was not cleared for release and is apparently on the list to be detained forever, although the reason for his being in this category boggles the mind.

emptywheel has more on the report here.