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Recent
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July
7, 2003
William Blum
The Anti-Empire
Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a
Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the
Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives
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Lesley
McCulloch
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Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The
Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log
7/3
July 4
/ 6, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth
of July
Frederick Douglass
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to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa:
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Jeffrey St. Clair
The Rat in the
Grain: Amstutz and the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard Schaefer
Rule by Fed:
Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is
for Today
Elaine
Cassel
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Ben Tripp
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Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence
Day
John Stanton
Happy
Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal
AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble
Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning
at Qaim
David Vest
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Adam
Engel
Queer as
Grass
Poets' Basement
Christian,
Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
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The Lipstick
Librarian
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3, 2003
Patrick W. Gavin
The Meaning of
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Thomas W. Croft
There Was a
Reason They Called It the Casino Economy
David
Lindorff
Outlawing
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John
Chuckman
Lessons from the
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Jackson Thoreau
New Far-Right
Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a
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Attack US Troops
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log
7/3
July 2, 2003
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Christian
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Bad Killing
Richard Falk
After Iraq, Does
UN War Prevention Have a Future?
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Weissman
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Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
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Podur
Uribe's
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Reuven
Kaviner
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Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log
7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice:
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Elaine
Cassel
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Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our
Assholes Belong to Ourselves
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Glahn
RIAA Watch: No,
No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in
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Gary
Leupp
Occupation,
Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log
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June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings:
an Exposé of Progressive Politics in America
Col. Dan Smith
The Occupation
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Tim
Wise
Race and
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Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and
the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation
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Elaine Cassel
Kentucky
Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark
Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log
6/30
Website of the Day
Bush El
Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis:
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Jeffrey St. Clair
Meet Steven
Griles: Big Oil's Inside Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's
Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These
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C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and
Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the
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Mariner
Rehnquist
Family Values
Ignacio Chapela
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Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's
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Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am
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Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your
Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill
Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor:
Art, Terror and the First Amendment
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The Anarchists'
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US Troops Outta
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Poets' Basement
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June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months
Prior to 9/11 Iraq Posed No Threat to US
David
Vest
Supreme Silence:
Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and
Release of "Comical Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney,
Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log
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Website of the Day
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Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
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Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz
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Paul
de Rooij
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Mass Graves and
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Cassel
Wolfowitz as
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CounterPunch Wire
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Bush's Wars Web Log
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June
25, 2003
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Z.
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Indonesia's
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Bacher
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Federman
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Elaine
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"Ain't No
Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
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Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log
6/25
Website of the Day
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24, 2003
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Cassel
Supreme
Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from
Tehran: Is It Worth It to Risk One's Life?
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Chuckman
The Real
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David Lindorff
WMD Damage
Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log
6/24
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23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied:
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Conn
Hallinan
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Wayne Madsen
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Edward
Said
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Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log
6/23
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21 / 22, 2003
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William A. Cook
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Standard Schaefer
The Wages of
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Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as
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Ploughshares
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10 Reasons to
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Avia
Pasternak
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CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
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Return to
Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny
Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
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Guthrie, Albert
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Gary
Leupp
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Steve
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Bush's Lies Marathon:
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Corrie
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Cassel
Civil Liberties
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
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Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush: A
Draft Resolution
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July 8,
2003
Cop, Prosecutor, Defense Lawyer,
Judge, Jury & Hangman: All in One
America's Kangaroo
Justice
By LINDA S. HEARD
I
caught sight of a picture of 35-year-old Briton Moazzam Begg hugging his
wife and children yesterday. Begg is one of six Camp Delta 'detainees'
destined to be the recipients of Pentagon-style justice in the form of
secret military tribunals. The picture was shocking. We have been led to
believe that the detainees are monsters, wild men, biting and scratching
beasts, killers who wouldn't hesitate in going for the jugular of any
innocent person.
So inherently "evil" were these prisoners, they had
to be handcuffed, shackled, gagged, hooded and chained to their seats
during the 17-hour flight from Afghanistan to Cuba. So heinous were they
that they were not allowed any exercise at all for the first year of their
incarceration, while the lights had to be left on in their tiny cells even
at night.
Yet here was Begg looking like a middle-class pater
familias, with ne'er a dripping fang in sight. One could even imagine him
to be a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher but never an Al Queda
mastermind.
In reality, Begg was a charity worker and a
translator who in June 2001 fulfilled his dream of opening a school in
Kabul for underprivileged children. During the Anglo-American invasion of
Afghanistan later that year, Begg wisely moved with his family to Pakistan
to wait out the war when he was kidnapped by the CIA, shoved in the boot
of a car and driven back to Afghanistan. There he was kept in a windowless
cellar at the Bagram Airbase for a year, allegedly subjected to beatings
and torture, before being flown to Camp Delta.
Today, Begg has been offered a Hobson's choice.
Either he admits to everything the Pentagon want him to when he will
receive a jail term of 20 years, or he can fight the case with the death
sentence looming large.
There are plans in the pipeline to build a Death Row
and an Execution Chamber at Camp Delta, merely awaiting the go-ahead from
George W. Bush, former governor of Texas, boasting the highest rate of
executions in the U.S.
If we are expecting compassion from the American
President then we should think again. This is the man who mocked an appeal
for clemency made by convicted murderer Faye Tucker during an interview
with Talk magazine. Bush pursed his lips, squinted his eyes and said in a
high-pitched feminine voice, "please don't kill me".
Bush has long said that he would bring the
terrorists to justice but with such a lack of transparency how do we know
that those 670 men and three children at Camp Delta are associates of
Osama bin Laden?
How can we ever know the truth when the U.S. has set
itself up as policeman, prosecutor, defense council, judge, jury and
hangman?
The detention camp at Guantanamo Bay has come under
worldwide attack yet the U.S. government is impervious to all criticisms,
even those from its friends and close allies.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, backed by the
Home Secretary David Blunkett, has urged U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell to repatriate British nationals held at Camp Delta on the basis
that Britain opposes the death penalty and wants the men to be tried
"under normal judicial process".
Britons are left wondering why on earth did Blunkett
recently sign a non-reciprocal treaty with the U.S., which removed the
requirement for prima facie evidence against an accused? Blunkett has
excused such lack of reciprocity as being due to the constraints of the
American constitution. In other words, Blunkett puts the US constitution
before the interests of his own people.
Travesties of
justice
Amnesty International has described the forthcoming
military tribunals as travesties of justice, basing this appraisal on the
fact that the system discriminates on the basis of nationality. In other
words secret tribunals are just for non-Americans, while US nationals,
such as the American Taliban John Walker Lindh, are able to enjoy the
protection of a civilian court and the expertise of a top
lawyer.
Further, Amnesty is unhappy that the commissions
would accept a lower standard of evidence than civilian courts, including
hearsay, and would not rule out statements made by defendants in coercive
circumstances.
Wire-tapping will be allowed of Pentagon-appointed
attorney-client meetings and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has
the ability to remove a judge at any time without giving any reason.
Evidence given over the phone and by pseudonym will also be
admitted.
The lawyers for Begg and Feroz Abassi, another
British member of the six, maintain that any confessions extracted from
the two while kept without access to lawyers, either in Afghanistan or
Cuba, have no status in international law and are inadmissible in British
courts. Legal representative for Australian detainee David Hicks has
described the tribunals as "kangaroo courts".
Another objection is that such military commissions
would not be independent from the U.S. government and, in contravention of
international law, defendants would have no right of appeal.
Director of the British pressure organization Fair
Trials Abroad has indicated that the tribunals are being "fixed" with one
aim in mind--to secure a conviction. "If they were prepared to take these
people to American soil and try them under normal U.S. prosecution, the
evidence wouldn't stand up," he said.
Incarcerated kids
Appeals from the UN Special Representative for the
Rights of Children in War have fallen on deaf ears too. Olara Otunnu has
complained about the detention of three teenage boys--between 13 and
16--demanding that the UN expects America to fulfill its obligations under
international law.
Donald Rumsfeld defended the boys' incarceration
saying, "They are enemy combatants".
General Richard Myers, Chairman of the US Military
Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the boys were being held "for a very good
reason--for our safety. They may be juveniles--but they are not on a
Little League team anywhere."
Little League or no, it does sound strange to many
of us that the mighty superpower with its nukes, fighter jets, bombs and
missiles, should be terrified of three little boys.
Otunnu said that even if the teenagers were found to
have been fighting as child soldiers, they should be demobilized,
reintegrated and rehabilitated. The UN, he added, was concerned that the
boys had no contact with their families or lawyers. "We do not sentence
children to jail. We do not punish them. We give them healing and get them
rehabilitated," he said.
Amnesty's response was "that the U.S. sees nothing
wrong with holding children at Guantanamo and interrogating them is a
shocking indicator of how cavalier the Bush administration has
become."
Dirty secrets
The human rights group and others have also bitterly
complained that detainees in Camp Delta and Bagram have suffered severe
abuse, including beatings, which probably led to the deaths of two men
held at Bagram, whose cause of death was given by U.S. military officials
as "homicide" and "blunt force injuries".
The U.S. has reluctantly admitted that suspected
terrorists are "softened up" by beatings and it is an open secret that
they are often blindfolded, kept in tiny spaces, tied up in painful
positions, sleep-deprived and subjected to continuous loud noise or bright
lights. Those who still resist are handed over to those foreign
intelligence services whose mandate allows them to use sophisticated
torture methods.
So eager is the Pentagon to keep its dirty secrets
it didn't hesitate in seizing audio recordings made by the BBC Panorama
team in June and banishing its reporter Vivienne White to another part of
the bay, far away from the detainees.
When during a press tour of the camp someone with a
Pakistani accent shouted: "Are you journalists? Can we talk to you?" and
White responded with "We're from BBC television", a U.S. officer cut short
the tour and ordered everyone out. It was later resumed once the BBC team
had been isolated from their more compliant media colleagues.
The Pentagon says that the detainees are not allowed
to speak to the media as this contravenes the Geneva Conventions, the very
conventions, which the U.S. government has chosen to ignore when it comes
to Guantanamo. In any event, the International Committee of the Red Cross
hotly disputes this claim.
If the BBC had been allowed to speak to some of the
inmates perhaps they would have discovered just why there have been so
many suicide attempts and the reasons why the majority in that camp are
suffering from severe depression. That would never do, now would
it?
It seems that the Pentagon assumes there is one law
for them and another for everyone else as we saw during the Iraqi invasion
when it was quick to point out that the showing of America's dead soldiers
and prisoners of war on television contravened the Geneva Conventions,
even while Western networks, including American, did not hesitate in
airing graphic footage of Iraqi prisoners of war and Iraqi
victims.
International Criminal
Court
Indeed, the U.S. exerts every effort internationally
to protect its own citizens going as far as to pressurize the UN Security
Council to grant U.S. peacekeepers immunity from prosecution by the
International Criminal Court (ICC).
At the same time, the American government has been
busy bullying nations to sign up to bilateral agreements barring them from
surrendering U.S. nationals to the ICC. Thus far, some 50 countries have
refused to sign up to such exclusion contracts even in the face of being
punished by a reduction of military aid.
Many of the former Yugoslavian states have called
the U.S. demands to hand over their citizens for trial in the Hague--where
Milosovich now languishes awaiting the outcome of his trial--as nothing
short of hypocrisy while the U.S. insists that other countries should
never attempt to extradite Americans.
Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the UN James Cunningham
rejected the assertion that the U.S. was attempting to put itself above
the law and said: "The ICC is not the law, describing the court as "a
fatally flawed institution".
If the ICC is "fatally flawed" what does that make
the Guantanamo secret military tribunals? Hardly hallowed halls of
justice!
Equity for all
There may be Americans who believe that their
government cannot put a foot wrong and trust in it implicitly. But,
unfortunately, this reverence doesn't wash for most of us.
I still recall Mohamed Higazy, an Egyptian student
who was wrongly imprisoned after 9-11 when a hotel security guard tried to
set him up by planting a ground to air wireless in his room safe. There
was the Saudi pilot who was named as being one of the 19 hijackers when on
September 11 he had been at home with his family in Saudi Arabia, and
untrue reports that hijacker Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi security
agent in Prague.
Just recently, the U.S. requested extradition of an
Algerian pilot Lutfi Raissi in connection with 9-11. A British court,
however, soon discovered that America could offer no single scrap of
evidence against him, and so refused the extradition request before
allowing Raissi to go free.
Recent reports of a man being jailed for life in the
U.S. for spitting at a policeman and another being given a long sentence
for making a joke about the president in a bar, hardly inspire
non-Americans with confidence in US justice either.
What we need is transparency and equitable treatment
for all. As Thomas Jefferson penned: "We hold these truths to be
self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable Rights..."
Today those rights are in jeopardy. They apply to a
favored few. But they are not being enjoyed by "all", as the wretched 670,
held at Guantanamo, and their worried families would, no doubt,
attest.
Linda S. Heard is a
specialist writer on Mid-East affairs and can be contacted at questioningmedia@yahoo.co.uk
Weekend Edition
Features
Patrick Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth
of July
Frederick Douglass
What is Freedom
to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa:
Racism, Exploitation and Neglect
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Rat in the
Grain: Amstutz and the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard Schaefer
Rule by Fed:
Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is
for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious
on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are
We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence
Day
John Stanton
Happy
Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal
AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble
Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning
at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell
the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as
Grass
Poets' Basement
Christian,
Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website of the Weekend
The Lipstick
Librarian
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