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Smoke, mirrors and American justice
The announcement by the Pentagon of trials by military commission for six of the big-name prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, is the latest in the series of smoke-and-mirror tricks used by the Bush administration to cover the inhuman illegality of the regime in the prison, writes Respect National Council member Victoria Brittain.
The issue is straightforward: the men cannot receive fair trials.

In these first cases linked to 9/11, prosecutors will seek the death penalty for the six men, who include the self-declared mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and of other al-Qaida attacks such as the east African US embassy bombings and the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The best-known of the other five defendants are Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni, said to have been the intermediary between the hijackers and al-Qaida, and Mohammed al-Qahtani, believed originally to have been the 20th hijacker for 9/11, although he failed to make it into the US.

The immediate problem for the holding of any successful trial of these men is that they are known to have been severely tortured by the CIA and contractors working for them. No evidence obtained by torture is admissible in any court, and senior US lawyers are lining up to make all necessary legal challenges to the government.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for instance, is one of three men (the others are Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri) who the CIA has recently admitted were tortured with "waterboarding" by their operatives.

The descriptions of this technique of simulated drowning, carried out in secret prisons halfway round the world, are the stuff of nightmares. It is torture, and that is outlawed under international law.

No words of excuse from the powerful can change that. And to see the CIA chief, Michael Hayden, in Congress openly justify waterboarding, is to see how far the war on terror has degraded the American government and its complicit allies here.

In the case of al-Qahtani, Time magazine published the secret log of his 49 days of 20-hour-per-day interrogation. The log described how the prisoner was forcibly administered intravenous fluids and drugs and forcibly given enemas, in order to keep his body functioning well enough for the interrogations to go on.

The log, titled Secret Orcon Interrogation Log Detainee 063 (pdf), offered a daily, detailed view of the interrogation techniques used to get confessions from him from November 2002 to January 2003. These included:

• Restraint on a swivel chair for long periods;
• Deprivation of sleep for long periods;
• Loud music and white noise played to prevent him from sleeping;
• Various humiliations, such as training him to act as a dog and wrapping him in an Israeli flag;
• Lowering the temperature in the room, then throwing water into his face;
• Forcing him to pray to Osama bin Laden.

Under this torture, not surprisingly, al-Qahtani made many false confessions, and implicated other prisoners. Later he withdrew all this, according to his lawyer.

Besides the issue of torture, the very system of military commissions has had a credibility problem from the start. The commissions have been beset by legal challenges, which went right to the supreme court, as well as by criticism from the military lawyers meant to work in them.
Although officials have spoken of charging 80 or more detainees with war crimes, so far only one case has been completed, that of David Hicks, an Australian and the only non-Muslim in GuantĂ¡namo. That ended with a plea bargain, which included a gagging order.

Over six years 1,000 prisoners have been held without trial - despite supreme court orders that their cases should be heard in federal courts. The men have been kept away from the courts by the US military, the justice department and the White House, because most would never be convicted of any crime.

Outrageously, covering up this history, the Pentagon propaganda teams are now comparing their military commissions for the 9/11 suspects favourably to the Nuremberg trials after the second world war. The American justice system is once again taking a body blow from the Bush administration.
 

News and articles of interest

Here are some articles and news reports we think are worth looking at

Gaza: The Real Terrorists - Stuart Littlewood
The patience of all decent men must surely be exhausted.
Today's slaughter of innocents in Gaza, with at least 230 reported killed in raids on "Hamas terror operatives" (as the Israeli military put it), amounted to "a mass execution", said Hamas.
Can there now be any doubt who the real terrorists are?
The killing spree couldn't have happened without the tacit approval of America, Britain and the EU. The political pea-brains that direct the pro-Israel western alliance were partying, gorging themselves on Christmas fare or binge-shopping while this massacre of hungry women and children and their despairing menfolk in Gaza was being planned and executed.

Stench of Death Hangs Over Gaza - Ola Attallah
With thick clouds of smoke billowing into the sky and dead bodies littering into the streets, a stench of death rose from the ruins of the Gaza Strip on Saturday, December 27.
"Where are my sons?" screamed Um Ibrahim as she ran hysterically looking for her little kids.
She lives near a security compound Israeli planes pounded to the ground on Saturday.
"I don't know what happened to them," cried the bereaved mother.
Her neighbor Um Abed fell unconscious when she saw her son among the dead in the attacks.
At least 206 Palestinians were killed in massive Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Saturday.
"The number of victims has reached 195 martyrs with more than 300 wounded, 120 of whom are critically hurt," said Moawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services.
"The toll has gone up because of new Israeli raids and the discovery of several martyrs under the rubble."

Gaza massacres must spur us to action - Ali Abunimah
"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing." Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel's latest massacres were broadcast around the world.
A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel's attacks, and others will follow.

Face to face with the Taliban - Ghaith Abdul Ahad
Qomendan Hemmet sat cross-legged under a window of the mud-walled room. His shoulder, sunk in an old military jacket, rested against the wall and a radio antenna stuck out of his pocket. Next to him sat his deputy, wrapped in a big blanket, silent and sleepy. Around the room sat his men, their faces contorted by years of fighting and poverty, dressed in shalwar kameez and magazine pouches, eyes dark as the kohl lining them. Radios crackled, phones rang non-stop, and more fighters came, drank tea and left with orders.
"Salar is the new Falluja," declared Qomendan Hemmet emphatically. "The Americans and the Afghan army control the highway, and five metres on each side. The rest is our territory."

Communication Workers Union vows to fight any privatisation - Christine Buckley
The main postal union gave warning yesterday that it would fight any move to partly privatise Royal Mail as expectations grow that the organisation is facing a huge shake-up.
This week the Government is expected to publish an independent report that it commissioned into the postal service which will pave the way for an overhaul of Royal Mail.

Free Bush shoe-thrower, Iraqis urge - Aljazeera.net
Thousands of Iraqis have demonstrated in Baghdad's Sadr City in support of a journalist being held in custody after throwing his shoes at George Bush, the US president.
Muntazer al-Zaidi was detained for what the Iraqi government on Monday said was a "barbaric and ignominious act" during a news conference the previous day.