More Questionable Treatment of Detainees (with UPDATE on Aafia)

UPDATE on Aafia: Look for these Aug 13/14 (HINT: be sure to read items on Aafia in media and blogs from Pakistan...and other countries around the world...very revealing...whether or not any suppositions pan out to be correct.)

Out most recently...
* For the US, Dr Aafia is a 'treasure trove' of information New Kerala
* Pak-Americans appealed to set up a legal fund to defend 'terror suspect' Dr Aafia New Kerala
* Dr Aafia's sister fears US security agencies might kill her New Kerala - Aug 13

Raise questions about remaining MISSING Pakistanis and others who may have been detained, some by BOUNTY? in cooperation between Pakistanis and US?

Since we know that both CIA and FBI and present US administration have been known to lie, to forge and to swap information among detainees to appear "in charge" and to "wrap up cases" let's hope those who are covering these detainee cases QUESTION EVERYTHING including the "evidence" claimed to be in Aafia's purse...Remember we were warned they'd be working "on the dark side" now for some years...what's changed so that we can believe everything that is told the public?

Whether Aafia is guilty or not is NO reason to allow her to be subjected to torture...nor any other detainee...this certianly doesn't improve our relationships with other countries nor does it help make us more secure as a nation....

Thanks for listening...


Federal court denies transfer for Uighur Guantanamo detainees
Mike Rosen-Molina

[JURIST] A judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] last week denied a request made by six ethnic Uighur Guantanamo detainees to be transferred to less restrictive facilities within the base. The petitioners argued that their solitary confinement in a higher security section of the base caused them mental suffering, but the court ruled that the detainees did not sufficiently demonstrate that they would suffer irreparable harm if they were not moved. Judge Ricardo Urbina ruled:

What is clear is that no court has ever ruled that detainees, designated as enemy combatants, have a right to challenge the conditions of their confinement pursuant to the constitutional writ of habeas corpus. Furthermore, courts are reluctant to second-guess day-to-day operations of domestic prison facilities, especially when doing so intrudes upon the military and national security affairs. This deference combined with the paucity of evidence of irreparable injury and the petitioners' failure to articulate a specific constitutional right and standard from which to analyze the facts of this case presses the court to deny the petitioners' motion for a TRO and a preliminary injunction.

Guantanamo Bay currently houses 17 other Uighur enemy combatants who have been cleared for transfer out of the facility.

In 2006, lawyers for several Chinese detainees still held at Guantanamo Bay filed a lawsuit in US federal court seeking their release due to alleged flaws in the process by which they were deemed enemy combatants. The group of seven ethnic Uighurs were deemed enemy combatants by Guantanamo's Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) , while five other Uighurs were cleared and subsequently released from Guantanamo Bay. The new lawsuit alleged that the CSRTs relied on essentially the same evidence that was used to clear the five, and asserts that the detainees continued to be held as the result of a political agreement between China and the US.

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Undisclosed detention

The ICRC has repeatedly expressed its concern about persons held in undisclosed, secret detention and has requested access to them. The ICRC firmly believes that no matter how legitimate the grounds for detention, there exists no right to conceal a person's whereabouts or to deny that they are being detained. The ICRC believes that any type of secret detention is contrary to a range of different legal provisions including the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

Why the ICRC?

The ICRC is an independent, humanitarian organisation, which has been visiting people detained in connection with armed conflicts since 1915, when its delegates first negotiated access to tens of thousands of prisoners of war held during the First World War. The ICRC's practice of visiting combatants captured during an international armed conflict was codified in the Geneva Conventions of 1949, to which all states are party.

Common Article Three of the four Geneva Conventions also gives the ICRC the right to request access to persons detained in non-international armed conflicts, such as civil wars. Under the statutes of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the ICRC can also request access to persons detained in connection with situations of violence that fall below the threshold of armed conflict. These statutes were approved in 1986 by the International Conference of the Red Cross, to which States party to the Geneva Conventions, including the US, participated.

Each year, the ICRC visits roughly half a million prisoners and detainees in more than 70 countries worldwide. (see Protecting prisoners and detainees in wartime).