Criminal Prosecution and Accountability

Lynne Stewart: Heroic Human Rights Lawyer Jailed
By Stephen Lendman

On November 20, New York Times writer Colin Moynihan broke the news headlining:

"Radical Lawyer Convicted of Aiding Terrorist Is Jailed," then saying:

"Defiant to the end as she embraced supporters outside the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, Lynne F. Stewart, the radical lawyer known for defending unpopular clients, surrendered on Thursday to begin serving her 28-month sentence for assisting terrorism."

Fact check:

Stewart did what all attorneys should, but few, in fact, do - observe the American Bar Association's Model Rules saying all lawyers are obligated to:

"devote professional time and resources and use civic influence to ensure equal access to our system of justice for all those who because of economic or social barriers cannot afford or secure adequate legal counsel."

Also to practice law ethically, morally and responsibly to assure everyone is afforded due process and judicial fairness in American courts. Sadly and disturbingly, Stewart was denied what she did for others heroically, unselfishly, and proudly. More on that below.

Stewart (prison number 53504-054) is now jailed at:

EXCLUSIVE: CIA Secret 'Torture' Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy
ABC News Finds the Location of a "Black Site" for Alleged Terrorists in Lithuania
By Brian Ross and Matthew Cole | ABC News

The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.

Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time. A full report on the can be seen on ABC's World News with Charles Gibson tonight.

"The activities in that prison were illegal," said human rights researcher John Sifton. "They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions."

Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what they called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the property and built the "black site" in 2004. Read more.

International Justice Group Takes Aim at Bush Officials
By Daphne Evitar | Washington Independent

The International Center for Transitional Justice usually focuses on bringing to light and holding perpetrators accountable for such heinous crimes as genocide, mass murder and systematic torture, often in far-off war-torn countries with dismal human rights records.

So it’s significant that today they’ve released a report calling on the United States to follow its legal obligation to prosecute the leaders in the U.S. government responsible for the “torture, cruel and inhuman treatment” of detainees during its own “war on terror.”

“Investigations and prosecutions should focus on the engineers of official policies that were the basis of illegal abuses, to send a clear signal that the absolute prohibition of torture and the ban on cruel and inhuman treatment will be respected by the United States,” the report said, adding that if the U.S. government fails to initiate prosecutions, then other countries will take up the cause. Italy, for example, recently convicted 23 Americans for their involvement in “extraordinary renditions.”

“Failing to hold accountable the architects and overseers of a policy of abuse undermines the U.S. justice system and the fundamental idea that law provides a check on power,” Alex Boraine, acting president of ICTJ, said in a statement today. “As we have seen in countless examples around the world, abuse of power by allowing torture and cruel treatment can tear down what the law and democracy have built.” Read more.

Afghan Lessons from the Iraq War
By Ray McGovern

You don’t have to go back 40 years to the Vietnam War to feel the sting of déjà vu. Returning to the Iraq War just three years ago will suffice.

Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates summed up the administration’s dilemma on Afghanistan in a single question: “How do we signal resolve and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that this is not open-ended?”

It is the same question that policymakers and generals were grappling with three years ago with respect to Iraq. Let’s hope they learned the right lessons from that experience, but it’s doubtful since the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) has been no help in shedding light on what actually happened.

If you remember, President George W. Bush had been voicing lots of optimism about the Iraq War and Vice President Dick Cheney had claimed the enemy was “in its last throes.” But it was becoming increasingly clear by 2006 that sectarian violence was ripping Iraq apart, that the death toll of American troops was rising, and that U.S. defeat was looming.

But Bush and Cheney were hell-bent on preventing defeat from happening, at least on their watch. Nor did they want the neo-con dream of a U.S.-dominated Iraq to die.

However, many in Washington – especially in the military – recognized that the Bush/Cheney war couldn’t be open-ended and that hard decision would have to be made for a gradual withdrawal to begin.

Iraqis level allegations of abuse, rape at UK troops after pullout
British defense ministry says charges being investigated
By Paisley Dodds, Associated Press | Daily Star

raqi civilians who were detained by British troops during the US-led war have leveled some 33 allegations of rape and abuse against male and female soldiers, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Saturday.

The allegations come in the wake of the British withdrawal from Iraq this year. One man says he was raped by two British soldiers while another claims he was sexually humiliated by both male and female personnel. Others allege they were stripped naked and photographed in the same style as the notorious pictures at Abu Ghraib, where abuses of prisoners by US troops helped fuel anti-American sentiment.

British soldiers have faced a series of claims that they mistreated Iraqi civilians in southern Iraq during six years of combat operations. Last year, Britain settled a legal case involving the death of one Iraqi civilian, and the abuse of nine others, paying out nearly $5 million in compensation.

A public inquiry is still under way into the death of hotel worker Baha Mousa. He died in the custody of British troops following a raid on his hotel in the southern Iraq city of Basra in 2003 and suffered 93 separate injuries. Read more.

http://www.indiegogo.com/bush

http://www.prosecutionofbushmovie.com

Meet Vince Bugliosi at this event:

David Swanson: "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union"

Los Angeles, CA

November 23, 2009

At St. Bede's Church in Mar Vista at 7:30 p.m.

3590 Grand View Blvd., LA 90066 (Mar Vista)

Sponsored by:
CODEPINK: Women for Peace
Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles
Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains
Westside Progressives
Winograd for Congress

CONTACT THE EVENT ORGANIZERS:

Ilene Proctor
proctor at anet dot net

Marcy Winograd
Winograd4congress at gmail dot com

UK war criminal: Troops kicked and punched Iraqis
By Meera Selva, Associated Press Writer | Miami Herald

Britain's first convicted war criminal said Monday that some of his fellow soldiers frequently beat Iraqi detainees.

Former Cpl. Donald Payne, who was jailed for a year in the death of hotel receptionist Baha Mousa and is now free, said that he had downplayed some of the abuses allegedly committed by his unit out of a sense of "misguided loyalty."

Mousa was held by British forces in the southern Iraq city of Basra and died of more than 96 separate injuries in 2003.

Payne's testimony at a public inquiry into Mousa's death comes in the wake of Britain's Ministry of Defense saying Saturday it was investigating 33 allegations of rape and abuse against British soldiers - male and female - who were stationed in Iraq. Read more.

Tomgram: Pratap Chatterjee, Afghanistan as a Patronage Machine | TomDispatch.com

~Chip's Note: Every once in a while, Tom over at Tom's Dispatch writes an intro to an article that is so well-researched and comprehensive that it's difficult to excerpt just a portion as a prelude to the published article. This is one of those times. Both Tom's introduction and Pratap Chatterjee's "Paying Off the Warlords, Anatomy of an Afghan Culture of Corruption" will provoke your outrage at the stark reality of the what is really happening in Afghanistan. Now, on to Tom's introduction.

There is much discussion in the media today about "corruption" in Hamid Karzai's Afghanistan, but remarkably little actual reporting about it. Just back from Kabul, TomDispatch regular Pratap Chatterjee, author of Halliburton's Army, helps to rectify that deficit. He offers a rare, news-making, eye-opening inside look at how that country's system of nepotism and corruption -- involving its old "warlords" from the days of the post-Soviet civil war and its new corporate "reconstruction" raiders -- actually works. His piece is an anatomy of the way the brother of the country's new vice president (and long-time warlord), Mohammed Fahim, is raking in tens of millions of dollars in diesel fuel contracts for an American-built power plant -- even though far cheaper methods of bringing electricity to the Afghan capital now exist.

"Every morning," Chatterjee begins, "dozens of trucks laden with diesel from Turkmenistan lumber out of the northern Afghan border town of Hairaton on a two-day trek across the Hindu Kush down to Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. Among the dozens of businesses dispatching these trucks are two extremely well connected companies -- Ghazanfar and Zahid Walid -- that helped to swell the election coffers of President Hamid Karzai as well as the family business of his running mate, the country's new vice president, warlord Mohammed Qasim Fahim."

He then follows the history of corruption and the path of the money -- both Afghan and American -- as he traces the business dealings of the Afghan elite, including figures connected to Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and well-connected western "reconstruction" companies.

He concludes: "This week, Mohammed Qasim Fahim will be sworn in as the next vice-president of the new government of Afghanistan. Under an agreement with USAID, this new government is required to spend Afghan money to buy yet more diesel for the [U.S.-built] Tarakhil power plant, which in turn will put money exclusively and directly into the vice president's brother's pocket."

From TomDispatch today, a rare, carefully reported, follow-the-money piece from Afghanistan that reveals the corruption and nepotism at the highest levels of the Afghan government -- Pratap Chatterjee, "Paying Off the Warlords, Anatomy of an Afghan Culture of Corruption." This is a devastating look at how Afghaniscam actually works. Read more.

By David Swanson

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the corporate "mainstream" media make quite a pair. We're hearing a very "balanced" debate over whether KSM should be tried in New York City, and whether the most insane objections to that proposal are really insane or not. But what are we not hearing?

We're not hearing that trying criminals for the crime of 9-11 ought to have been what we did years ago, rather than waging wars in response to a crime. We're not discussing the possibility that had alleged 9-11 criminals been tried years ago rather than being imprisoned and tortured together with hundreds of innocents depicted as subhuman monsters, the "war on terror" might have been replaced with simply the wars on Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis. What effect might that have had on Americans' willingness to surrender their Bill of Rights? We aren't hearing about that.

[Names like Meyer and Manning will be familiar to readers of the Downing Street Memos, but where's Dearlove?]

MI6 chiefs to give evidence to Iraq inquiry
guardian.co.uk

Past and present heads of the Secret Intelligence Service to be questioned by Sir John Chilcot's investigation into war

Past and present chiefs of MI6 are to be among the first witnesses to give evidence to the official inquiry into the Iraq war, it was disclosed today.

Sir John Scarlett, who retired as director general of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) last month, will be questioned about his chairmanship of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).

During that time, between 2001 and 2004, he oversaw the government's dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Federal prosecutors oppose former Gov. Don Siegelman's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court
By Mary Orndorff | The Birmingham News

The U.S. Supreme Court does not need to hear the appeal of former Gov. Don Siegelman because prosecutors adequately proved at trial that he exchanged an official act for a political donation, according to written arguments filed late Friday by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Siegelman and co-defendant HealthSouth Corp. founder Richard Scrushy in August asked the justices to take up their case because they believe it raises broader legal questions about how much evidence is needed to prove bribery.

They argue that the donations Scrushy made to Siegelman's lottery fund and Siegelman's subsequent appointment of Scrushy to a state health board were normal political transactions, not criminal. And they contend that government prosecutors never proved there was an explicit agreement to exchange the appointment for the $500,000 in donations.

But the solicitor general of the U.S., responding Friday on behalf of the prosecution team, said case law allows the jurors to infer, even from circumstantial evidence, that there was an agreement to exchange the money for the official action. Read more.

John Allen Muhammad, Death Penalty and the Gulf War Syndrome
By William Hughes

“Let’s call it [the death penalty] by its real name...and recognize it for what it is--vengeance!” - Albert Camus

The state of Virginia, on Nov. 10, 2009, at 9:11 P.M., executed by lethal injection the Washington area sniper, John Allen Muhammad, aka John Allen Williams. The deed was carried out at the death chamber, at the Greensville Correctional Center, in Jarratt, just south of Richmond. Muhammad was convicted of killing Dean Howell Meyers, who was refueling his car in Manassas, VA, on Oct. 7, 2002. The Governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine, rejected Muhammad’s lawyers’ plea to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. On his killing spree, which inspired widespread fear and panic, Muhammad left nine other innocent dead victims in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. His motive for his shooting rampage, committed at random, went to the grave with him.

There wasn’t anything the Commonwealth of Virginia could do to bring back the victims of Muhammad’s murderous onslaught. As far as his execution being a deterrent to other would-be killers, the record shows that such an argument doesn’t hold any water. And, if the state truly believed in its deterrent argument, then why didn’t it put Muhammad’s execution on television?

One sign from anti-death penalty protesters outside the prison read: “We remember the victims, but not with more killing.”

By David Swanson

My dear Republicans friends, it's probably not my place to ask. I'm not one of you, but I'm not your enemy either. I'm not an apologist for the other party or a third party. I'm an advocate for replacing the two parties with three branches. We still teach our children about the three branches of our government, but I'm afraid most adults have forgotten what that was supposed to mean.

Like you, I'd like us to be able to unelect people as well as elect them in fair and verifiable elections. Like many of you, I oppose massive bailouts for Wall Street, bipartisan gerrymandering, corporate control of government, warrantless spying, ballot access restrictions, budget deficits, lying politicians, and the so-called mainstream media.

A Guest Blog by Gerri Haynes: Journey to Gaza, The Beginning | Larry Johnson Online

Larry Johnson wrote: (For the next week or so, I will be running a guest blog by Gerri Haynes, a former president of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility. Gerri, a nurse from Kirkland, Wash., is in Gaza with 11 other people in an effort to help the people there and also to better understand the situation.)

This journey has been months in the planning and today we were able to cross into Gaza through the Erez checkpoint from Israel. We are a thankful group! The Gaza Community Mental Health Programme and associated health care providers are giving us this week in service.

There are 12 of us. Six physicians will see patients in cardiology, maxillo-facial surgery, family practice/emergency medicine, neurosurgery, urology, and psychiatry. Our nurse/grief consultant will teach classes in grief and bereavement. Five of our delegation – a pastor, an attorney and three human rights professionals will talk with families and listen to people throughout the area – all in service to this land that is trying to recover from the war of last winter.

WPSR made a first journey to Gaza in 1993. Here, we met Dr. Eyad El Sarraj, Director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme. Dr. Sarraj has published important articles and papers on the health situation in Gaza, the mental health of the population, the effects of war and living as a refugee on children and critiques of the political situation in his country.

In 1993, entry to Gaza was accomplished through a small checkpoint. At that time, Israel physically occupied Gaza. There were Israeli guard towers visible at frequent intervals and Israeli soldiers appeared on every street. Now, there is an imposing warehouse-like checkpoint building on the Israel side of the crossing. Security is tight.

We applied for permission to enter Gaza several months in advance of today’s crossing and were assisted by an Israeli lieutenant in gaining that permission. Israel no longer physically occupies Gaza – the settlements were vacated and destroyed by Israel in 2005 – but remote occupation continues. By various means, Israel controls all movement at the borders of Gaza. There is no free movement of goods or services and complete closure of the Gaza Strip is a constant threat. Join in Gerri's day-by-day account of her Gaza experience; it's recommended reading by Ann Wright.

Dozens of Gitmo detainees finally get day in court
By Pete Yost, AP | Yahoo! News

In courtrooms barred to the public, dozens of terror suspects are pleading for their freedom from the Guantanamo Bay prison, sometimes even testifying on their own behalf by video from the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

Complying with a Supreme Court ruling last year, 15 federal judges in the U.S. courthouse here are giving detainees their day in court after years behind bars half a world away from their homelands.

The judges have found the government's evidence against 30 detainees wanting and ordered their release. That number could rise significantly because the judges are on track to hear challenges from dozens more prisoners.

Scooped up along with hard-core terrorist suspects in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, these 30 detainees stand in stark contrast to the 10 prisoners whom the Obama administration targeted for prosecution Friday for plotting the Sept. 11 and other terrorist attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of 9/11, and four of his alleged henchmen are headed for a federal civilian trial in New York; five others, including a top suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole, will be tried by a military commission.

More detainees are expected to soon be added to the prosecution list. But there will still be plenty of cases left among the 215 detainees now at Guantanamo to keep the judges here busy as they work to clear a legal morass the Bush administration created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Bush administration Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once promised Guantanamo held "the worst of the worst." The judges here have rejected pleas for release from eight detainees, but they have concluded the government doesn't even have enough evidence to keep 30 other detainees behind bars. Read more.

Illinois prison top contender to house Gitmo detainees, official says
By Jessica Yellin | CNN

If the Bureau of Prisons purchases the 1,600-cell site, it would operate primarily as a federal prison and lease a portion of it to the Defense Department to house a limited number of Guantanamo detainees, one Obama administration official said.

There are about 215 men held by the U.S. military at the Guantanamo prison camp. Among the detainees are five suspects with alleged ties to the 9/11 conspiracy, including accused mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who will be transferred to New York to go on trial in civilian court, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday.

A prison in northern Illinois is the leading contender to house some detainees transferred from the federal facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, two Obama administration officials told CNN Saturday.

Officials from the department of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security and federal Bureau of Prisons will be will be visiting the maximum-security Thomson Correctional Center, about 150 miles west of Chicago, on Monday, the officials said.

Earlier Saturday, a statement from Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn's office said senior Obama administration officials would be visiting the Thomson prison to see whether the "virtually vacant, state of the art facility" could be of use to the Bureau of Prisons. Read more.

Secretary Of Defense Says Americans Should Not See Torture Photos | Press Release
ACLU Says Actions Stifle Transparency and Accountability | ACLU

WASHINGTON – In a brief filed late Friday night, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates invoked his authority to block the release of photos depicting the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody overseas. The photos are the subject of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit seeking their release. Secretary Gates was granted the authority to exempt certain images from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as part of a new law signed by President Obama last month.

“We are disappointed that Secretary Gates has invoked new legislation to keep the torture photos secret,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “These photos are an important part of the historical record and they are crucial to the ongoing debate about accountability. In withholding the photos, Secretary Gates has cited national security concerns, but no democracy has ever been made stronger by suppressing information about its own misconduct."