"The training includes.... having officers watch videos of American TV crime shows such as “CSI: Las Vegas’’ and courtroom movies such as “My Cousin Vinny.’’"
That's a joke, right?
No, America, I'm afraid it is not.
And what is worse is the way the CIA's favorite newspaper wraps this turd for you:
"US aims to instill trust in Afghan justice; Works to train police and bring order to courts" by Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post | March 14, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — Behind the combat troops and military trainers, alongside the aid workers and agriculture experts, come the lawyers.
That's not a liberation.
US State Department legal specialists and contractors are fanning out across the capital and throughout the provinces, trying to build a functioning legal and correctional system in a broken country where justice is too often delayed, denied, or nonexistent.
Yeah, NEVER MIND the INDEFINITE DETENTIONS and TORTURE occurring at BAGRAM, GITMO, or any of the black hole sites, etc, etc.
Related:
"The Obama administration, which is considering plans to indefinitely detain dozens of Guantanamo Bay prisoners without civilian or military trials"
I believe the word is HYPOCRISY!
And look at the agenda-pushing, war-promoting, AmeriKan MSM gushing about how great this is:
The widespread sentiment that there is no justice in Afghanistan is a principal cause of popular disillusionment with the government of President Hamid Karzai. The feeling has been exploited by the militant Taliban, which dispenses its own brutal version of summary justice in areas under its control.
Yeah, us Amurkns are going to show them how to oppress and torture the right way!
You know what? It is THEIR FUCKING COUNTRY! Leave them alone!
Oh sorry, that gives us the right to flatten the countryside with depleted uranium munitions over a fucking lie.
The US-led effort is already showing results.
I really can not take much more horse s*** propaganda, folks.
Near the end of a seven-month American training course for prosecutors and police officers, a prosecutor from Takhar Province, Abdul Zaher, said: “Afghans are used to torturing suspects. In this course, we’ve learned to stop because it’s illegal. If we have a suspect in custody, we’ve learned how to treat him.’’
Oh, the TORTURING AmeriKans showed you that, huh?
Yes, dear readers, I am SICK of the FUCKING MSM INSULTS, too, can you tell?
The problems here affect every level of the justice system, from police to courts to prisons.
Because there are not enough attorneys, many suspects are sentenced to prison without ever seeing a defense lawyer as required by the Afghan constitution. Many prisoners languish in jail past the time they can be legally held without a trial.
Yeah, WE are going to show THEM how to do it.
Pfffffft!
Some of the problems were on display during a recent court session at the country’s main intelligence office, the National Security Directorate, which tries terrorism suspects. In a cramped room, the prosecutor read the charges aloud while one of the three judges talked on his cellphone and another sent text messages.
There was no computer, telephone, or electricity. The prosecutor carried court documents in a green plastic shopping bag. Judge Abdul Baset Bakhtiari told one suspect he was being sentenced to six years in prison for belonging to the Taliban but said the man could appeal. The defendant angrily demanded a copy of the charges against him, and the judge burst out: “We don’t have a photocopier! You want the judge to pay for this out of his own salary?’’
Judges complain they have no equipment, no cars to travel to court, no government-issued phones, and, most importantly, no security — many are threatened, some have been kidnapped, others killed....
So WhereTF did all that aid money go?
Nearly everyone agrees the system is awash in corruption.
Yeah, the AmeriKans will fix that!!
The wealthy or those with connections rarely face punishment....
So it is NO DIFFERENT than the AmeriKan Justice System!
US officials recognize those doubts about the system here.
“This is one of the most important challenges that we face,’’ said David Johnson, assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. “People have to be confident that justice is being done.’’
Un-flipping-fucking-real!
The bureau is working with police and prosecutors to develop a computerized case management system for the courts. Its $100 million budget is projected to nearly double next year.
Yes, that is YOUR TAX MONEY AT WORK, America!
Good thing you didn't need it for anything.
The challenge is daunting. Afghanistan is divided into 34 provinces and 400 small districts, and fewer than a hundred of those districts have an assigned prosecutor. Most have no defense lawyers and no courts.
Well, they have TALIBAN COURTS, but.... talking AmeriKa's MSM here.
To bring some order to a system with 15,000 active criminal cases nationwide, a US contractor developed a relatively simple system in which each case was assigned a number and a colored folder with a form for such basic information as the defendant’s name, arrest date, arresting police officer, prosecutor, and judge.
Gee, I wonder how much they overcharged for that one.
About a third of the cases have entered the new system — in the process of reviewing cases to create the files, authorities found that 128 prisoners were incarcerated beyond their terms.
Even before suspects are arrested, investigations must be improved, US officials have said. They have created training for police and prosecutors — in many cases, the sessions mark the first time the two Afghan groups have trained together.
The training includes staged crime scenes with wooden dummies for corpses, marked off with red and white tape to keep onlookers at bay. The sessions also include providing officers with copies of the Afghan constitution and penal code, fingerprint kits, and digital cameras — and having them watch videos of American TV crime shows such as “CSI: Las Vegas’’ and courtroom movies such as “My Cousin Vinny.’’
That last movie is a frikkin' COMEDY!!!!
Afghans can only hope they get a judge like this:
"US judge urges skepticism on forensic evidence; Gertner says she’ll expect defense lawyers to challenge its validity" by Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | March 29, 2010
“CSI’’ may make for gripping television, but US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner says forensic evidence isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.
But we have the Afghans watching it and learning.
In a move that some legal scholars said may be the first by a federal judge, Gertner has ordered defense lawyers and prosecutors not to assume that evidence routinely accepted in the courts for decades is reliable. Defense lawyers, she wrote, should vigorously challenge fingerprints, bullet identification, handwriting, and other trace evidence, and prosecutors should be prepared to show it is valid.
You are not telling us anything we did not already know.
Related: CSI Massachusetts
Massachusetts Justice: Holding Back
Massachusetts Justice: Wrongful Convictions
Massachusetts Justice: Wrongful Imprisonment
MSM Xmas Gifts: To American Convicts
Around AmeriKa: Loony Louisiana
Yeah, turns out authorities are pretty much the same everywhere.
That's AmeriKan Justice, all right!
So how are Afghans going to know the difference?
“In the past, the admissibility of this kind of evidence was effectively presumed, largely because of its pedigree — the fact that it had been admitted for decades,’’ Gertner wrote in a March 8 order. “As such, counsel rarely challenged it, and if it were challenged, it was rarely excluded or limited.’’
I CHALLENGE EVERYTHING the lying government and agenda-pushing MSM say now.
TOO much lying for far too long.
That needs to change, she said. A critique last year by the National Academy of Sciences, she noted, concluded that forensic evidence used to convict thousands of defendants for nearly a century is hardly the infallible proof of police procedurals on television. Too often, the study found, it is the product of sloppy practices that should be improved and standardized.
And here we are TEACHING the Afghans with the stuff!!
They ALREADY KNOW how to FRAME PEOPLE, according to the WaPo!!
Spurred by the report and criminal cases she has presided over, Gertner wrote that the validity of such evidence “ought not to be presumed’’ and that defense attorneys should contest it at pretrial hearings, or explain why they do not.
Oh, don't worry, it isn't here.
She will allow the evidence to go before a jury only if it meets sound scientific principles.
That is why there will never be a real investigation and trials regarding the INSIDE JOB of 9/11. No way those buildings falling down contrary to the immutable laws of physics could ever be explained.
Defense lawyers and advocates for people who have been wrongly convicted of crimes welcomed Gertner’s order.
“It’s a wakeup call not only to other judges and to prosecutors but frankly to defense attorneys who for years — despite the rising tide of scientific reports indicating that many of the so-called tried-and-true disciplines were not in fact so true — rarely did their homework to mount serious challenges,’’ said Peter Neufeld, a cofounder of the New York-based Innocence Project. The nonprofit group uses DNA evidence to exonerate wrongly convicted prisoners.
I hope you get a good attorney, Afghans. You will be one up on Americans then.
Neufeld, who testified before the panel of scientific and legal experts that produced last year’s report on forensic evidence, said a recent study he co-wrote for the Virginia Law Review found that flawed forensic testimony contributed to 60 percent of 137 wrongful convictions later overturned through DNA evidence. That makes misapplied forensic evidence the second-leading cause of wrongful convictions, behind eyewitness misidentification, he said.
And if you can not trust DNA evidence.... OUT of COURT it goes!!!
A spokeswoman for US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz of Massachusetts declined to comment on Gertner’s order.
Jennifer Mnookin, a professor at UCLA’s School of Law and leading scholar on expert and scientific evidence, said she was unaware of any other federal judge who has issued such an order, although judges have refused to let shaky scientific evidence go before juries after pretrial hearings.
Mnookin said forensic testimony is highly persuasive to juries but that the February 2009 study by the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most prestigious scientific body, underscored that the evidence often does not meet the basic requirements of good science.
Can you even call it "evidence" at that point?
She said, for example, that fingerprint experts often make extravagant claims on the stand, such as that a latent fingerprint recovered at a crime scene could only have come from the defendant and no one else in the world.
Which episode was that?
Gertner, who is generally popular with the criminal defense bar but viewed skeptically by some officials in law enforcement, has long been critical of such claims....
Well, the fascistas have forfeited their right to trust, so....
In recent years, the reliability of some forensic evidence has been attacked because experts misinterpreted it or because the science behind it was discredited.
Yeah, right, the authorities innocently misinterpreted it, pfffft!
As for discredited science, that doesn't seem to bother the MSM or authorities when it comes to the great fart misting, 'er, global warming.
In 2004, for example, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report discrediting the FBI technique of matching the chemical signatures of lead in bullets at crimes scenes to similar bullets possessed by suspects. The FBI discarded the technique.
And HOW MANY PEOPLE were convicted with that "evidence" before?
Also in 2004, a prison inmate, Stephan Cowans of Roxbury, was exonerated in the 1997 gunshot wounding of a Boston police sergeant after law enforcement officials acknowledged that a thumbprint on a glass mug found near the crime scene had been misidentified as his.
Yeah, sure!
They GOT THEIR GUY and TAILORED the EVIDENCE to FIT like they do ALL the TIME here!!!
And what good are all these databases anyway?
Sounds like they have too many of them.
In the wake of the blunder, the city shut down the police fingerprint unit until it was overhauled.
Yeah, I'll trust them now.
Related: Massachusetts Police Take Bad Picture
WTF are they smoking over there, readers?
John H. Cunha Jr., a Boston lawyer who failed to persuade the state Supreme Judicial Court in 2005 to bar fingerprints analysis from being presented in all state criminal trials until it was subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny, said....
Translation: OUR COURTS DON'T CARE about TRUTH or JUSTICE!
Enjoy, Afghans!!!
“Just because something’s been around for a hundred years doesn’t mean it’s reliable. Astrology has been around for centuries,’’ he said. “The stakes are too high in our society to be using junk science and putting it before juries which think that it’s gold.’’
Why not?
MSM does it with you-know-what.
Yeah, you don't want me showing up in your jury pool if you are a prosecutor -- especially since I'll be a stealth juror.
Can't trust the cops, end of story.
Shouldn't take long for Afghans to get acclimated to AmeriKan Justice then.
Update:
"Afghan detainees held in isolation in secret prison; US military camp exempt from policy" by Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times | November 29, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan - A US military detention camp in Afghanistan is still holding inmates for sometimes weeks at a time and without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to human rights researchers and former detainees held at the site on the Bagram Air Base.
EVEN HITLER let the RED CROSS IN, AmeriKa!!!!!
The site consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each lighted by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day. The former prisoners said their only contact with another human being was at twice-daily interrogation sessions.
Related: Memory Hole: What Four Years of Torture Will Do to an Innocent Man
The jail’s operation highlights a tension between President Obama’s goal to improve detention conditions that had drawn condemnation under the Bush administration and his desire to give military commanders leeway to operate. In this case, that means isolating certain prisoners for a time so that interrogators can extract information or flush out confederates.
Yup, NO CHANGE HERE!!!
While Obama signed in January an order to eliminate so-called black sites run by the CIA, that order did not apply to this jail, which is run by military Special Operations forces. Military officials said as recently as this summer that the secret Afghanistan jail and another like it at the Balad Air Base in Iraq were being used to interrogate high-value detainees. And officials said recently that there were no plans to close the detention centers.
Translation: Obama is WORSE THAN BUSH!!!
Obama told us he was going to END SECRET TORTURE at SECRET SITES!!!
In August, the administration restricted the time that detainees could be held at the secret jails to two weeks, changing previous Pentagon policy....
Like that means anything. Just another lie, right?
Detainees call the Afghan site the black jail.
“The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place,’’ said Hamidullah, a spare-parts dealer in Kandahar who was detained in June and who, like some Afghans, doesn’t use a last name. “They don’t let the ICRC officials or any other civilians see or communicate with the people they keep there. Because I did not know what time it was, I did not know when to pray.’’
Related: The Torture of Dilawar and Habibullah
The Perversions of Torture
Hanging From the Ceiling in Afghanistan
Closing the Case of Torture in Afghanistan
Bagram: The Guantanamo of Afghanistan
Afghanistan Torture Chamber
Inside Bagram Prison
American Amnesty
Want a reservation for a room, American?
Hamidullah was released in October, after five and half months in detention, five to six weeks of it in the black jail, he said. Although his and other detainees’ accounts could not be independently corroborated, each was interviewed separately and described similar conditions. Their descriptions also matched those obtained by two human rights workers who had interviewed other former detainees at the site. While two of the detainees were captured before the Obama administration took office, one was captured in June of this year.
Obama PICKING UP where Bush left off!
Related: Obama to Refine Bush-Era Torture Techniques
I wonder how that is going.
All three detainees were later released without charges. The three did not say they had been tortured, though they said they heard sounds of abuse and felt humiliated and roughly treated.
Well, THAT is TORTURE in my book!!
Others, however, have given accounts of abuse at the site, including two Afghan teenagers who told The
HOW DARE WE CRITICIZE ANYONE over "human rights," AmeriKa!?
Neither Pentagon nor White House officials would comment publicly because the existence of the site is classified. The black jail is separate from the larger Bagram detention center, which now holds about 700 detainees, mostly in cages accommodating about 20 men apiece.
Cages, huh?
Like you would PUT an ANIMAL in, right?
That center will be closed by early next year and the internees moved to a new larger detention site.
Oh, I'm sure the Afghans LOVE that "liberation!"
In early 2008, military officials acknowledged receiving a confidential complaint from the International Committee of the Red Cross that the military was holding some detainees incommunicado.
AmeriKan MSM does it on its own.
--more--"Yeah, we are going to show them how to do it.
