Brookline MA Rallies Every Saturday for Bush-Cheney Accountability for War Crimes

Coolidge Corner, 10-11:30 AM Through 5/30/09 - Submitted by Chip on Wed, 2009-04-01 20:32. Activism Criminal Prosecution and Accountability - We'll be rallying in Coolidge Corner, Brookline, Massachusetts every Saturday morning April 4 to May 30, 2009 from 10 am to 11:30 am. Please join us to DEMAND JUSTICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY.

Rights & Liberties Special

Alternet dot org - Rights & Liberties Special Coverage /Newsletter (get it for free in your email box) GO: here

Gen. Petraeus Denies U.S. Torture; Meanwhile Pinochet Judge Launches Criminal Probe of Bush Attorneys - By Liliana Segura, AlterNet The six targets named include former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, who could face "immediate arrest" upon entering Spain. GO: here

The Woman Who Could Nail Bush: Are the Worst of the Torture Memos Still to Come?
By Scott Horton, The Daily Beast
The GOP is threatening an ugly fight over an Obama Justice Department appointee who wants to disclose more Bush-era torture memos. GO: here

Will the Persecution of Political Prisoner Sami Al-Arian Finally Come to an End?
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig The trial and imprisonment of the university professor has been capricious, inept and overtly racist every step of the way. GO: here

OMG Gitmo! Miss Universe Visits Guantanamo Bay, Finds it 'Relaxing' 'Calm and Beautiful' By Liliana Segura, AlterNet Dayana Mendoza on the U.S. prison camp: "I didn't want to leave." GO: here

There are More startling articles (I have posted some of these earlier on oneheartforpeace) & Videos underneath this timely letter from the editors of this section: GO: here

As I write this, footage from the protests at the G20 summit today shows bloodied demonstrators and broken bank windows -- the sexy stuff the news media likes to talk about when it's not dissecting Michelle Obama's fashion aesthetic and comparing it to French First Lady Carla Bruni's. Meanwhile the source of the anger that has brought protesters in droves to London's financial district goes undiscussed, as though the global economic crisis were something that only exists in the stately closed-door conversations between the world leaders assembled there.

Meanwhile, glimpses of what is happening in the rest of the world are disconcerting to say the least. FBI Director Robert Mueller pushing to renew key surveillance powers of the USA PATRIOT Act, horrible anti-woman legislation in Afghanistan, and, in Sri Lanka, a violent and nearly invisible killing campaign that Arundhati Roy likens to "genocide." (In news that is tragic in a different way, be sure to catch Miss Universe's musings on her recent trip to Guantanamo Bay, available here.) Read about all of this and more in AlterNet's Rights & Liberties Special Coverage. And be sure to read my colleague Joshua Holland's revealing first-person account of his run-in with this country's immigration system. You won't be sorry.

Thanks for reading, Liliana Segura, Editor, Rights & Liberties Special Coverage

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Find all the following at the same site:
GO: here

Killings and Concentration Camps: A Colossal Humanitarian Tragedy is Underway in Sri Lanka and No One is Saying a Word By Arundhati Roy, Comment Is Free
What is happening right now in Sri Lanka, and what is being so effectively hidden from public scrutiny, is a brazen, openly racist war.

Also if you haven't yet seen this shocking report: Seymour Hersh: Secret U.S. Forces Carried Out Assassinations in 'a Lot of' Countries, Including in Latin America
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! The investigative journalist for The New Yorker explains his recent bombshell revelation about Dick Cheney's "executive assassination" squads.

Afghan President Signs Law "Legalizing Rape"
By Jerome Starkey, Independent UK
Karzai rushed the new Shia Family Law through parliament in a shameless bid to win votes in advance of national elections.

I Married an Illegal Immigrant: A First-Hand Account of How Screwed Up This Country's Rules for Foreigners Are By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
The one argument in the immigration debate with absolutely no merit is that the system is fine.

Ted Stevens' Charges Dropped: A Tale of Two Justice Systems
By Joshua Holland - For the wealthy and the powerful, exculpatory evidence is important.

They call me Y. But I am more than a letter. I am a man.

Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (1) Detainee Y
1.4.09

They call me Y. But I am more than a letter. I am a man. I’m Algerian, and am 39 years old.

It’s been such a long time since I experienced “normal life.”

My story is a bit confusing to follow. I’ll keep it simple.

I came to the UK because of its impressive human rights record. Well, that’s what everyone said. I had spoken out against human rights abuses at home and got into trouble for it, so I had to leave. Maybe I should have been like everyone else and not said anything. What would you have done?

Now I have a death sentence waiting for me in Algeria.

I was living in London, as a refugee, rebuilding my life, recovering from torture and finally overcoming the demons it leaves behind.

Things were going well, and then suddenly my life turned upside down. First I was arrested as part of the “ricin plot.” I spent 27 months in Belmarsh. There never was any ricin.

I was acquitted in 2005. I walked out of court a free man. You know, some of the jury members became my friends.

After 7/7 they came for me again. I had nothing to do with it. I was arrested, served with a deportation order to Algeria and taken to Long Lartin prison. No charge. No trial. I was there for 29 months.

And since last July I have been again on bail. I live alone on a housing estate, two hours outside London. A place arranged by the Home Office. It’s not easy to get to, and I don’t have many visitors. Sometimes I don’t speak to a human being, face-to-face, for nearly two weeks.

I feel watched all the time. “They” go everywhere I go. I don’t know what they want or what they are looking for.

It was a relief not to go back to prison last week. You know the only thing that scares me? It’s spending the rest of my life in prison. I don’t know why they keep trying to put me there. I want to know why, but they won’t tell me.

After ricin, I thought the nightmare was over, but it’s not. It has gone on and on. You know sometimes I think I’m going to wake up and this will have been just a dream.

I survived torture. It was some years ago, back in Algeria. It’s not an easy thing to go through. I wish none of you ever suffer it. But torture, it has to end. What is going on now has no end. This is slow torture.

My father died a few months ago, back home. It was a very hard time. I was all alone with my grief. I felt useless and worthless and hopeless. The thing he said he wanted most was to hold me again. I couldn’t even give him that.

My father was totally blind. I used to be his eyes.

Well, what else can I say? I feel so tired. I just want to stop thinking. I want to wake from this nightmare. All I have are dreams and hopes and wishes, but it’s hard to keep hold of these.

I just want to sleep.

I have to stay in the house for 20 hours a day. I wear a tag. It makes me feel like a slave.

I am not allowed outside my boundaries. I can’t go to the town centre, but I can go to two cemeteries if I want. Mostly I don’t want!

The only place I go to every day is Tesco’s. The security guards there are giving me funny looks now. I am there every day at the same time.

Why am I living like this? Why did I spend 56 months in prison? Why do they want to deport me to Algeria? Why do they say I’m a threat to national security? I am here like this today because of secret evidence.

With the permission of Detainee Y, this was read out, by the actor Honor Blackman, at “Britain’s Guantánamo? The use of secret evidence and evidence based on torture in the UK courts,” a parliamentary meeting in the House of Commons, chaired by Diane Abbott MP, on March 30, 2009. The script was written by Saleyha Ahsan, and the material used was carefully gathered through interviews.

This is part of a series of four articles and five statements examining the use of secret evidence in the British courts. For an introduction, see “Britain’s Guantánamo: An Introduction,” and for the first two articles, see “Torture taints all our lives” (published in the Guardian’s Comment is free), and “Britain’s Guantánamo: Calling For An End To Secret Evidence.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and see here for my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.

For other articles dealing with Belmarsh, control orders, deportation bail, deportations and extraditions, see Deals with dictators undermined by British request for return of five Guantánamo detainees (August 2007), Britain’s Guantánamo: the troubling tale of Tunisian Belmarsh detainee Hedi Boudhiba, extradited, cleared and abandoned in Spain (August 2007), Guantánamo as house arrest: Britain’s law lords capitulate on control orders (November 2007), The Guantánamo Britons and Spain’s dubious extradition request (December 2007), Britain’s Guantánamo: control orders renewed, as one suspect is freed (February 2008), Spanish drop “inhuman” extradition request for Guantánamo Britons (March 2008), UK government deports 60 Iraqi Kurds; no one notices (March 2008), Repatriation as Russian Roulette: Will the Two Algerians Freed from Guantánamo Be Treated Fairly? (July 2008), Abu Qatada: Law Lords and Government Endorse Torture (February 2009), Ex-Guantánamo prisoner refused entry into UK, held in deportation centre (February 2009), Home Secretary ignores Court decision, kidnaps bailed men and imprisons them in Belmarsh (February 2009), Britain’s insane secret terror evidence (March 2009).

Find the above with LINKS and info on Andy Worthington's book: -The Guantanamo Files- at here

Britain’s Guantánamo: Calling For An End To Secret Evidence

Britain’s Guantánamo: Calling For An End To Secret Evidence by Andy Worthington
1.4.09

On Monday, in a packed committee room in the House of Commons, politicians, lawyers and human rights campaigners came together to discuss how to both confront and publicize the British government’s increasing reliance on the use of secret evidence, and evidence obtained through torture. The meeting focused in particular on the cases of five men held under strict bail conditions or in prison, on the basis of secret evidence, who are facing deportation, even though they face the risk of torture, as a result of “diplomatic assurances” agreed between the British government and the governments of their home countries. However, the use of secret evidence also affects other men, held under control orders, who cannot be deported either because they are British nationals, because the British government has failed to secure “diplomatic assurances” that it regards as credible, or because, on occasion, the courts have intervened to prevent their deportation.

Since the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, our government has aped the horrendous flight from domestic and international law that was introduced by the government of George W. Bush in its brutal and chronically ill-advised “War on Terror,” and, as a result, has fatally undermined Britain’s reputation as the country that introduced habeas corpus — establishing that no one may be imprisoned “except upon the lawful judgment of his peers or the law of the land” — and exported it to the rest of the world. As the American lawyer Tom Wilner explained to me in an interview for a forthcoming documentary about Guantánamo, “That’s the most basic protection of the law and you in England should be very proud of it because it is the basis of the rule of law around the world.”

It is, moreover, just as disturbing to realize that this descent towards tyranny has taken place while largely ignored by the British public, or hidden from it through the complicity of the media, and to note that, while many British people were happy to bash the Bush administration for its brutal and lawless policies, they have been far less willing to accept that similar policies have been implemented in their own backyard.

As Gareth Peirce, the solicitor for many of the men held in Britain on the basis of secret evidence, explained in an introductory letter to the meeting,

Reliance upon secret evidence in this country, in ways that avoid any proper open scrutiny, increases daily. In recent months this reliance, far more extreme in the UK than in any equivalent democracy, has been commented on with intense disapproval by every relevant international body including the “Eminent Jurists Panel” of the International Committee of Jurists (which studied over two years the use of anti-terrorism practices worldwide), the United Nations Committee on Human Rights, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights (PDF), and the European Court of Human Rights in the case of A and Others.

The nightmare that surrounds this particular small group of men upon which the meeting focuses, is not therefore an isolated event; it takes place in the context of an important, far wider and ever increasing way in which we find our laws and their application on a collision course with the most basic of concepts; that an accused person knows the case against him, and can contest it in a fair, open and public hearing.

The concept is easy, but the need to explain it and debate it adequately is not easy — it is elusive and appears not to affect most of society.

As well as attracting a wide range of lawyers and activists, Monday’s meeting also succeeded in drawing support from a number of MPs, including Peter Bottomley, David Davis, David Drew, Lynne Featherstone, Kelvin Hopkins, David Lepper, Sarah Teather and Des Turner, and members of the House of Lords, including Baroness Howells and Lord Avebury. The MPs were asked to pledge their support for an early day motion declaring “That this house believes the use of secret evidence in UK courts is fundamentally wrong,” and Diane Abbott opened the meeting by declaring that it had three additional aims:

1) To form a group of interested parliamentarians, lawyers, doctors and activists to continue to work on this issue;
2) To call for an independent inquiry into the use of secret evidence in the UK;
3) To ask for assurances from the FCO and the Home Office that secret evidence used here is not based on evidence obtained through torture.

Also mentioned was a proposal to ask those MPs who have constituents who are being detained — whether in prison or in their homes — to visit Long Lartin prison, or their constituents’ homes, to see for themselves the conditions in which they are held.

The speakers — Gareth Peirce, Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, Ben Ward of Human Rights Watch, and Dinah Rose QC — then ran through the history of secret evidence, and addressed its significance. Gareth Peirce said that we were two-thirds of the way down a slippery slope, from which there could be no return, and called the current situation a “national emergency.” She noted that, when Guantánamo opened, and people saw the shackled prisoners in their orange jumpsuits, they were reminded of slavery, and instinctively knew that it was wrong, and that when Stephen Lawrence was murdered, people again knew instinctively that what had happened was wrong, but that in the case of the men detained in the UK over the last seven years, these instinctive responses have been stifled by the use of secret evidence.

The other speakers highlighted different aspects of the government’s policies. Shami Chakrabarti described the history of SIAC (the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which assesses the deportation cases, often taking evidence in closed sessions), and explained how, after 9/11, it had mutated into a “secret terror court,” and Ben Ward drew the meeting’s attention to a troubling passage in the FCO’s recent report on human rights (PDF, p. 16), in which, after stating, “The use of intelligence possibly derived through torture presents a very real dilemma, given our unreserved condemnation of torture and our efforts to eradicate it,” the report’s authors added, “Where there is intelligence that bears on threats to life, we cannot reject it out of hand.”

Although this was followed by a declaration that it is “quite clear” that “information obtained as a result of torture would not be admissible as evidence in any criminal or civil proceedings in the UK,” the passage as a whole confirms not only that the FCO is committed to keeping open a torture loophole, but also that, because that information cannot be used in a court, it will, instead, undoubtedly contribute to perpetuating the very system of detaining people on the basis of secret evidence that Monday’s meeting was convened to address.

I was particularly impressed by Dinah Rose’s statement, in part because, as a barrister, she has direct experience of SIAC in three different roles — as instructed by the Home Office, as a representative of some of the detainees held on the basis of secret evidence, and as a special advocate (the barristers who represent the detainees in closed sessions, but who are prohibited from discussing anything that takes place in these sessions with either the detainees or their lawyers).

Dinah stated that it was “hard to explain just how shocking an experience SIAC is for an advocate used to the basic norms of our legal system,” adding, “It is the first principle of natural justice that a person has a right to know the case against them, so that they can respond to it. We take this principle for granted, from our earliest childhood.” Noting that “this principle simply does not apply in SIAC,” she explained that, as a result,

although SIAC looks and sounds like a court, and the judges and barristers behave with the courtesy and formalities that are used in court, it is in reality nothing of the kind. Often it feels to me like an elaborate charade, in which we are all playing the roles of barrister, solicitor, appellant and judge, but where the basic substance of a court hearing — the testing of evidence to establish where truth lies — is entirely missing.

Dinah proceeded to provide two anecdotes which vividly demonstrate how SIAC and the use of secret evidence have undermined the principles of natural justice. In the first, she recalled an incident a few years ago, when she was working as a special advocate in a hearing at which the Home Secretary applied to revoke a detainee’s bail on the basis of secret evidence. This related to alleged attempts by the detainee to breach his bail conditions, but, as she explained, “The special advocates were told what the evidence was, but we were prohibited from discussing the material with the appellant or his lawyers. We were simply unable to offer any resistance at all to the application, in the absence of any instructions, which might have explained or cast a different light on the evidence.” She proceeded to explain that, as a result, the judge revoked the detainee’s bail, and ordered him to be sent to Belmarsh, and added,

I can still recall my deep feeling of shame when I heard the appellant ask the judge the question: why are you sending me to prison? To which the judge replied: I cannot tell you that. I could not believe that I was witnessing such an event in a British court. I could not believe that nobody protested or made a fuss. They simply took him to jail, without any explanation at all.

On another occasion, Dinah was working with a colleague on the case of another detainee, who, it was alleged, “had attempted to travel on a particular date, using a passport which belonged to another suspected terrorist.” It was only because her colleague was working on another case, in which another detainee was accused of exactly the same offence — using the same passport, on the same day and at the same time — that it became apparent that the intelligence services had made a serious mistake in compiling their evidence, but she explained that when she subsequently went on a training session with the intelligence services, and asked for an explanation of how such a mistake had been made, she was told, “very firmly,” that it was “impossible.”

Bringing the story up to date, Dinah then described what happened five weeks ago, after SIAC was convened to assess the bail conditions of the five detainees facing deportation. As she described it, she and her colleagues “successfully resisted” an application by the Home Secretary to revoke their bail, but instead of abiding by the Court’s ruling, the Home Secretary then arranged for the two men who had attended SIAC to be sent to Belmarsh prison instead of going home, and imprisoned the other three after seizing them from their homes. Dinah then explained what happened next:

The next morning we returned to SIAC urgently to seek habeas corpus and a renewal of bail, and asked politely on what basis our clients had been detained. The explanation, in relation to four of the five, was not that there had been any new development or evidence which had emerged since the hearing. Rather, the Home Secretary had simply disagreed with the judge’s assessment that it was not necessary or proportionate to lock the men up. So, notwithstanding the decision given on the previous day, she had decided to go ahead and detain them anyway.

She added that, although she was constrained from commenting further, because the Home Secretary’s decision “remains the subject of legal proceedings,” she “made the point at the time that such conduct by a government minister is a basic violation of the principle of the rule of law,” and she concluded her statement by declaring that “we should be more disturbed than we are about what goes on in SIAC. Unless its activities are subject to the scrutiny of parliament and the media, there is a significant risk that principles which I had always comfortably assumed to be so deep rooted in the UK that they no longer needed defending could be further eroded.”

In a successful attempt to humanize the detainees, who are mostly identified only by initials (Detainee Y, Detainee BB, Detainee U, and Detainee Z), the speakers’ statements were punctuated by other statements, written by the detainees themselves, or compiled from interviews conducted by their friends, which were read out by Honor Blackman and a group of actors from the National Theatre. The first three of these statements will be published after this article, and the other two will be published tomorrow, along with another article, “Britain’s Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?” which compares and contrasts the regimes implemented by the Bush administration at Guantánamo, and the British government in the UK.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and see here for my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.

For the first two article in this series, see Britain’s Guantánamo: An Introduction and Torture taints all our lives (published in the Guardian’s Comment is free), and for other articles dealing with Belmarsh, control orders, deportation bail, deportations and extraditions, see Deals with dictators undermined by British request for return of five Guantánamo detainees (August 2007), Britain’s Guantánamo: the troubling tale of Tunisian Belmarsh detainee Hedi Boudhiba, extradited, cleared and abandoned in Spain (August 2007), Guantánamo as house arrest: Britain’s law lords capitulate on control orders (November 2007), The Guantánamo Britons and Spain’s dubious extradition request (December 2007), Britain’s Guantánamo: control orders renewed, as one suspect is freed (February 2008), Spanish drop “inhuman” extradition request for Guantánamo Britons (March 2008), UK government deports 60 Iraqi Kurds; no one notices (March 2008), Repatriation as Russian Roulette: Will the Two Algerians Freed from Guantánamo Be Treated Fairly? (July 2008), Abu Qatada: Law Lords and Government Endorse Torture (February 2009), Ex-Guantánamo prisoner refused entry into UK, held in deportation centre (February 2009), Home Secretary ignores Court decision, kidnaps bailed men and imprisons them in Belmarsh (February 2009), Britain’s insane secret terror evidence (March 2009).

FIND all the above with LINKS, Comments and information on Andy Worthington's book:
-The Guantanamo Files- at here
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Also look at the posts below this one for related items.

Iran's offer of help to rebuild Afghanistan heralds new age of diplomacy with the US

guardian dot co dot uk: 2009-04-01 - Senior western officials yesterday heralded a new spring in relations with Iran, after the Islamic regime made an historic offer to help US-led efforts in Afghanistan. For full article Go here

U.S., in reversal, runs for UN rights council seat

hereThe United States said on Tuesday it will run for a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, reversing the Bush administration's decision to keep its distance from the 47-member panel.

US Prosecutors - Persistent Problems - So Holder Drops Case Against Stevens: Nina Totenberg NPR First Report

National Public Radio (NPR) Morning Edition, April 1, 2009 · The Justice Department on Wednesday asked a federal judge to drop all charges against former Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska.

A jury convicted Stevens last fall of seven counts of lying on his Senate disclosure form in order to conceal $250,000 in gifts from an oil industry executive and other friends. Stevens was the longest-serving Republican in the Senate. However, he lost his bid for an eighth full term in office just days after he was convicted. Since then, charges of prosecutorial misconduct have delayed his sentencing and prompted defense motions for a new trial.

In a move first reported by NPR, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said he has decided to drop the case against Stevens rather than continue to defend the conviction in the face of persistent problems stemming from the actions of prosecutors.

"After careful review, I have concluded that certain information should have been provided to the defense for use at trial," Holder said in a statement Wednesday. "In light of this conclusion, and in consideration of the totality of the circumstances of this particular case, I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial."

The judge in the Stevens case has repeatedly delayed sentencing and criticized trial prosecutors for what he has called prosecutorial misconduct. At one point, prosecutors were held in contempt. Things got so bad that the Justice Department finally replaced the trial team, including top-ranking officials in Public Integrity Section, which is charged with prosecuting public corruption cases.

With more ugly hearings expected, Holder is said to have decided late Tuesday to pull the plug. His decision is said to be based on Stevens' age — he's 85 — and the fact that Stevens is no longer in the Senate. Perhaps most importantly, Justice Department officials say Holder wants to send a message to prosecutors throughout the department that actions he regards as misconduct will not be tolerated.

"The Department of Justice must always ensure that any case in which it is involved is handled fairly and consistent with its commitment to justice," Holder said in his statement.

Holder began his career in the Public Integrity Section; and, according to sources, he was horrified by the failure of prosecutors to turn over all relevant materials to the defense.

The attorney general also knows the trial judge, Emmett Sullivan, well. The two men served together as judges of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia before each was promoted to higher office.

Holder respects Sullivan and reportedly has watched with growing alarm as Sullivan repeatedly has scolded prosecutors for failing to follow his judicial orders to fully inform defense lawyers about everything from potentially favorable evidence to the travel plans of witnesses. During the trial, prosecutorial missteps led the judge to instruct the jury to disregard some evidence.

Sentencing has been repeatedly delayed. By last month, it was playing a back seat to charges of prosecutorial misconduct — as a whistle-blowing FBI agent made complaints about improper conduct by a fellow agent and prosecutors. With a hearing scheduled in two weeks to explore those charges, Holder decided to review the case himself.

Justice Department officials say they will withdraw their opposition to the defense motion for a new trial and will dismiss the indictment — in effect voiding the Stevens conviction.
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Attorney General Holder's Statement On The Stevens Case (April 1, 2009)"In connection with the post-trial litigation in United States v. Theodore F. Stevens, the Department of Justice has conducted a review of the case, including an examination of the extent of the disclosures provided to the defendant.

After careful review, I have concluded that certain information should have been provided to the defense for use at trial. In light of this conclusion, and in consideration of the totality of the circumstances of this particular case, I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial."The Department's Office of Professional Responsibility will conduct a thorough review of the prosecution of this matter.

This does not mean or imply that any determination has been made about the conduct of those attorneys who handled the investigation and trial of this case."The Department of Justice must always ensure that any case in which it is involved is handled fairly and consistent with its commitment to justice. Under oftentimes trying conditions, the attorneys who serve in this Department live up to those principles on a daily basis. I am proud of them and of the work they do for the American people."