Monday, August 3, 2009

The Differing Degrees of Torture

Related: The Boston Globe's Iranian Insult: When Irish Arms Are Open

There is the good....

"Scores of Guantanamo cases are ensnared in a legal limbo" by Del Quentin Wilber, Washington Post | August 1, 2009

WASHINGTON - In the 13 months since the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision granting detainees at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their confinements before federal judges, most prisoners still have not had their day in court.

Please remember that when you consider how quickly the Iranians are trying our terrorists, 'er, assets.

In addition, prisoners who have successfully contested their detentions are having difficulty getting released. Nineteen of 28 detainees ordered freed remain at Guantanamo Bay, ensnared in a diplomatic and legal limbo that has frustrated federal judges, the government, and attorneys for detainees....

In some cases, after years of court battles, the government abandoned allegations on the eve of hearings. That was the case involving a young Afghan detainee who was ordered released Thursday. In many respects, judges and lawyers for the government and detainees have spent much of their time in the past year tussling over some of the same vexing issues that have stymied two presidents and Congress and recently forced a Justice Department task force to announce that it needed six more months to complete its work.

Yeah, whatever. I'm tired of the lying and excuses.

“These cases are difficult,’’ US District Chief Judge Royce Lamberth said in an interview about the issue last week. “We are having to develop answers to complicated legal questions. These are novel cases in our country’s history.’’

Judges, lawyers, government officials, and outside analysts said there are myriad reasons for the sluggish progress.... The government’s evidence is heavily classified, resulting in cumbersome handling procedures. Judges, for example, cannot take most government documents home to review at night. Instead, most of the judges visit the courthouse on weekends to review Guantanamo Bay files. The work is so time-consuming that the judiciary has assigned federal judges from outside the District of Columbia to help handle routine civil matters.

Also the fact that it's all a crock of s***. 9/11 an INSIDE JOB!

Battles over legal issues and evidence have also gobbled up time. Attorneys for detainees have aggressively sought access to medical records and documents that might undermine government allegations. Meanwhile, the government has fought the detainees’ requests and has continued to defend cases that judges say are surprisingly weak.

Because they're FRAME JOBS if anything at all!!

And you can THROW OUT the CONFESSIONS because of the TORTURE!

Justice Department officials counter that they are trying to protect national security and classified information.

Translation: the U.S. public must never know what out government did to people over a load of lies.

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"Court-prison considered for terror suspects; Cuba detainees could be moved to Kan., Mich." by Lara Jakes, Associated Press | August 3, 2009

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex in the United States to house suspected terrorists, combining military and civilian detention facilities at a single maximum-security prison.

Ah, the FUSION of FASCISM in AmeriKa!

Several senior US officials said the administration is eyeing a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum-security prison in Michigan and the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site to hold 229 suspected Al Qaeda, Taliban, and foreign fighters now jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba....

The White House considers the courtroom-prison complex as the best among a series of bad options, an administration official said..... For months, government lawyers and senior officials at the Pentagon, Justice Department, and the White House have struggled with how to close the internationally reviled US Navy prison at Guantanamo.

Congress has blocked $80 million intended to bring the detainees to the United States. Lawmakers want the administration to say how it plans to make the moves without putting Americans at risk.

Related: FBI Says Bin Laden Can Strike From U.S. Prison

The facility would operate as a hybrid prison system jointly operated by the Justice Department, the military, and the Department of Homeland Security....

The Pentagon would oversee the detainees who would face trial in military tribunals.... [and] create a single venue for almost all the criminal defendants, ending the need to transport them elsewhere....

Providing long-term holding cells for a small but still undetermined number of detainees who will not face trial because intelligence and counterterror officials conclude they are too dangerous to risk being freed.

We have no business criticizing anybody!

Building immigration detention cells for detainees ordered released by courts but still behind bars because countries are unwilling to take them.

Yeah, it is THEIR FAULT for not taking our innocent victims of torture!

Two senior US officials said one option for the proposed hybrid prison would be to use the soon-to-be-shuttered Standish maximum-security state prison in northeast Michigan. The facility already has individual cells and ample security for detainees.

Getting Standish prison ready for the detainees would be costly. One official estimated that it would cost $100 million for security and building upgrades.

All for a LIE, America, as if you had nothing better to do with that $$$$.

Administration officials said the US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth is under consideration because it is already a high-security facility that could be further protected by the surrounding military base....

And if the "terrorist" escapes he' got acces to weapons on a military base?

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More embarrassment for AmeriKa:

WASHINGTON - Legally speaking, Guantanamo Bay detainee Alla Ali bin Ali Ahmed should be a free man. But he remains behind barbed wire in Cuba because he has nowhere to go.

Ahmed, a 26-year-old Yemeni who was captured at a Pakistan guesthouse in 2002, was ordered released in May by a federal judge in Washington who said he found no credible evidence that he was involved in terrorism. The government’s deadline for appealing Ahmed’s release has run out.

Yet Ahmed sits at Guantanamo as the US tries to figure out what to do with dozens of detainees - many of them Yemeni - who officials say probably will be freed. Rather than just send them home, the Obama administration wants the Yemeni detainees to first go through rehabilitation centers in Saudi Arabia before they are released to make sure they pose no threat to Americans.

Related: "Al-CIA-Duhs" Catch-and-Release Program

Ahmed’s lawyer said he should be out of Guantanamo shortly. “We’re expecting Mr. Ahmed to be released soon, and we think it’s the right result, and we’re very pleased about it,’’ Kit Pierson said Friday.

But Ahmed could still be locked up by next January, when the Obama administration plans to shut down Guantanamo. Despite months of delicate diplomacy, a senior administration official said the United States has been unable to persuade Saudi leaders to let the Yemeni go through its rehabilitation center, in part because of a public relations problem.

Yeah, you know, excuses, sophistries, whatever. No big deal about our tortured and indefinitely imprisoned hostages, 'er, detainees.

Thousands of extremists, including Guantanamo detainees, have received job training, psychological therapy, and “religious reeducation’’ in Saudi jihadist rehabilitation before being sent back to society. The vast majority have not rejoined the fight. Yet some have.

Yeah, I know, I linked it.

In an embarrassing episode for the kingdom, Saudi officials announced in February that 11 former Guantanamo detainees who went through the rehab program - including Yemenis - were on its government’s most wanted terrorist list....

It's called a REVOLVING DOOR and it SERVES a PURPOSE!

ENDLESS WARS because of 'terrorists."

Still unknown is where detainees still at Guantanamo will go when - or if - the prison is closed by Jan. 22....

If? IF?!!!!!!!!

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Now for an article the GLOBE MISSED!

"Yemeni official: Gitmo inmate died of asphyxiation" by MIKE MELIA, Associated Press | August 1, 2009

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- A Guantanamo detainee whose death has been blamed on suicide apparently died of asphyxiation, a Yemeni official said Saturday.

The preliminary conclusion, which suggests the prisoner strangled himself, offers the first details about the death of Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al Hanashi, who was found unresponsive inside a psychiatric ward. The disclosure also raises questions about how a prisoner could have choked himself to death inside the closely watched ward....

Translation: He was murdered.

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and the bad....

"Amadinejad denies split with ayatollah; Says rivals trying to create rift" by Nasser Karimi and Lee Keath, Associated Press | August 1, 2009

TEHRAN - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad begins his second term next week undermined by a deepening feud with his fellow hard-liners and under assault from a proreform opposition movement that has shown it can bring out thousands of protesters despite a fierce seven-week-old crackdown....

Thousands of protesters held a memorial Thursday at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery on Tehran’s outskirts to commemorate those killed in the crackdown since the disputed election. Police fired tear gas and beat protesters with batons, but the march continued....

Protesters then streamed back into central Tehran - some chanting on the subway, “Traitor Mahmoud, we want you to become homeless’’ - and again clashed with security forces....

Activists on the Web have called for protests during Ahmadinejad’s inauguration Wednesday. The government and Khamenei’s clerical leadership have also come under fire over alleged abuses of detained protesters. Authorities say 30 people were killed in the seven-week-old crackdown, but human rights groups say the number is far higher. In recent days, several young protesters arrested in the sweeps have turned up dead, apparently from abuse in prison.

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Are you offended yet?

Then gird yourself for a Sunday double dose:

"Conspiracy Trial for 100 Dissidents Begins in Iran" by Robert F. Worth and Nazila Fathi, New York Times | August 2, 2009

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Iranian authorities opened an extraordinary mass trial against more than 100 opposition figures on Saturday, accusing them of conspiring with foreign powers to stage a revolution through terrorism, subversion, and a media campaign to discredit last month’s presidential election.

The trial, coming just days before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to be sworn in for a second term, signaled an intensified government attack on the opposition movement, which maintains that the June 12 election was rigged and continues to muster widespread street protests.

I never read the NYT because of this offensive s***.

The accusations read out in the courtroom were a broadside against virtually every major figure associated with reform in Iran, going well beyond those actually arrested. State television broadcast images of the defendants, who included a former vice president and a Newsweek reporter, as well as some of the reform movement’s best-known spokesmen, clad in prison uniforms and listening as prosecutors outlined their accusations in a large marble-floored courtroom. Some were shackled.

Opposition leaders angrily disputed the accusations on Saturday and protested that the defendants had had no access to lawyers or to details of the charges against them.

How does it feel to be a Gitmo inmate?

Although the trial was expected, its scale took many Iranians by surprise, coming days after the government said there would be only 20 defendants. As the trial started, just after 9 a.m., prosecutors named a long and wide-ranging list of conspirators, including the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi and the Stanford historian Abbas Milani, and echoed the Iranian government’s longstanding claims that its internal critics are pawns of an international plot to undermine the Islamic republic through human rights groups and even terrorists.

YUP!!!!

Related: U.S. Terrorizes Iran

On Saturday, prosecutors highlighted what they called a confession by Muhammad Ali Abtahi, a cleric who served as vice president under the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami. Mr. Abtahi, one of Iran’s most widely read bloggers, was arrested shortly after the election, and word later emerged that he had appeared in a tearful videotaped confession. Such confessions, which have frequently been used before, are almost always obtained under duress, according to human rights groups and the defendants themselves....

Oh, that is REALLY, REALLY, RICH, NYT!!!

Thank the Lord I no longer purchase you or read the website.

Only picked this up because Globe ran it.

Then I find out the NYT or Globe butchered, censored, and rewrote a big chunk of it.

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"Iranian-Americans galvanized by election protests" by Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times | August 2, 2009

LOS ANGELES - The proud procession through the heart of the largest Iranian community outside Iran - dubbed “Tehrangeles’’ - had the feel of a massive coming-out party for a people who had been largely invisible to the rest of the United States.

Since when was the last time the Zionist media praised Iranians, huh?

The violent crackdown against Iranians who continue to protest the outcome of a disputed election in Iran has galvanized Iranian-Americans, especially in Los Angeles, like never before. The challenge here, leaders say, is whether they can capture the passion aroused in the community to establish a greater voice in US politics.

You want a model? Try AIPAC!

Iranian-Americans are among the country’s wealthiest and most educated immigrant populations. They are partners at major law firms, executives at Fortune 500 companies, and professors at distinguished universities. Yet only a handful have been elected to public office, none of them on Capitol Hill.

Unbelievable! The Zionist media is really pathetic.

Activists and scholars say the community’s aspirations have been hurt by fractiousness, inexperience with grass-roots politics, and a serious image problem. Most Americans know more about Iran’s radical clerics and nuclear ambitions than its proud cultural heritage.

And WHOSE FAULT is that, Zionist war propagandists??

Frustrated by their lack of political clout, some of the community’s most prominent members decided two years ago to form a lobbying and public relations group in Washington, D.C., called the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian-Americans, or PAAIA....

I don't even want to continue. Ever see an article on AIPAC?

Iranian immigration largely began when Islamic revolutionaries overthrew Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979.

Yeah, they were OUR CIA ASSETS fleeing for their lives!

Subsequent waves included many who welcomed the ouster of a repressive monarch but became disillusioned with the fundamentalist clerics who replaced him. Some belonged to ethnic and religious minorities, others to political factions ranging from monarchists to communists.

US census data put their numbers at about 338,000, but community estimates run as high as 500,000 in Southern California and 1 million nationwide. Jimmy Delshad, who as Beverly Hills mayor in 2007-08 was the most senior Iranian-American elected official, thought it would be easy to run because of the large Persian-Jewish population. But he said, “When I went door to door, I couldn’t even get them to register to vote.’’

So EVEN the IRANIAN MOVEMENT has been COOPTED by JEWS, huh?

Of course, never mind the 25,000 Jews living hppily and worshiping freely in Iran.

Bakhtiar hopes the enthusiasm stirred by events in Iran can be focused on domestic issues, such as increasing Iranian-American representation, making friends on Capitol Hill, and preventing discrimination in schools and on the job.

A jew through and though.

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TEHRAN - Criticism of Iran’s mass prosecution of political activists widened yesterday....

The sharp rebuke.... also showed the broad scope of opposition....

The blanket trial - on broad charges of trying to bring down the nation’s political order - appeared part of an attempt by authorities to rattle and discredit the core of the reform movement in one blow. Officials claim the opposition was a tool of foreign countries aiming to topple the Islamic state. State media quoted Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as Khatami’s vice president, as “confessing’’ to working to foment unrest.

But rights groups have said such confessions are often obtained under duress in Iran.

But NOT in AmeriKa when it comes to 9/11 'terrorists."

The trial was closed to all but state media.... and for not allowing defense lawyers access to the courtroom or the case files.

GITMO, you hypocritical war-mongering Zionist s***-sheet!

The growing criticism came as Ahmadinejad prepared to officially begin his second four-year term.

Then HE'S NO DICTATOR!

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say over all state matters, has supported Ahmadinejad in the election dispute. But the growing criticism about how the government has handled the crisis has compounded the biggest challenge the cleric-led system has faced since the Islamic Revolution.

At least 30 people were killed in the unrest that followed the election as hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets to protest Ahmadinejad’s victory, according to Iran’s parliament. Human rights groups believe the number is likely far greater, and at least one person, Mohsen Rouhalamini, has died in detention.

How many have died in the U.S.' torture chambers?

How many Palestinians have died in Israeli jails?

You know what I'm getting at, right?

Mohsen is the son of Rezaei’s top aide, Abdolhossein Rouhalamini. He was arrested at a July 9 protest and taken to a hospital two weeks later where he died. Opposition websites said his jaw was broken when his father received his body.

That's what happens when you are an Israeli tool.

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