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	The US Supreme Court"s decision on Guantanamo Bay is a victory for the rule of law by Associated Press & agencies   June 13, 2008   The UN"s top human rights official today welcomed a US Supreme Court ruling that Guantanamo prisoners have the right to challenge their detention at the US military base in civilian courts.   "The Supreme Court has sent a vitally important message that the protections afforded by fundamental human rights guarantees extend to these individuals and that effective remedies must be available to them," said Louise Arbour, UN high commissioner on human rights, in a statement.   She welcomed the court"s recognition that "security and liberty are not trade-offs", and pointed out that with legal issues surrounding the issue settled, she hoped that the courts could "move promptly" to assess individual detainees" situation.   "After up to six years in detention in Guantanamo Bay without satisfactory review of the reasons for their detention, these detainees have the right to prompt review in the civilian courts," she added.   Other lawyers are expected to join in a blizzard of filings to the war-crimes tribunal and to US federal courts after the ruling today that detainees at Guantanamo Bay are entitled to habeas corpus, the right to challenge their detention in civilian court.   The Supreme Court ruling complicates the Bush administration"s repeated attempts to put suspected terrorists before war-crimes tribunals at the US Navy base in southeast Cuba.   "The entire legal framework under which Mr. Hamdan was to be tried has been turned on its head," Hamdan"s lawyer, Navy Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer said.   Mizer said the defence lawyers can now argue that their clients have the right to confront their accusers and not incriminate themselves, both of which have been denied under the Military Commissions Act.   Amnesty International said the decision was an "essential step forward towards the restoration of the rule of law."   "This is the third time since 2004 that the US"s highest court has rejected arguments advanced by the Bush administration that it can indefinitely detain people without charge or trial, with no meaningful access to justice," the rights group said.   June 12, 2008   Landmark Supreme Court Ruling on Detainees. (Human Rights Watch)   The US Supreme Court ruling recognizing the right of prisoners to challenge the legal basis of their detention, the centuries-old right known as habeas corpus, provides a basic check against the abuses inherent in unfettered executive power. The June 12, 2008, ruling in Boumediene v. Bush undermines the Bush administration’s practice of holding terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay in indefinite detention.   “The Supreme Court decision has stripped Guantanamo of its reason for being: a law-free zone where prisoners can’t challenge their detention,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director at Human Rights Watch. “The ruling is not only a landmark victory for justice, it’s a big step toward establishing a smarter, more effective counterterrorism policy.”   The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, rejects the Bush administration’s argument that prisoners can be held for years without a fair process for assessing the evidence against them. It means that the federal courts – which are equipped with the procedures necessary to protect sensitive national security information – will now be able to examine the basis for detainees’ claims that they are wrongly held.   In reaching its decision, the court rejected the administration’s assertion that the procedures established in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 were an adequate substitute for habeas.   The Supreme Court’s ruling firmly rejects the Bush administration’s view of Guantanamo as a “law-free zone,” which provided the original impetus for transferring hundreds of men for detention there.   It also represents an important step toward ending the administration’s use of military commissions, set up to try foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo. As Human Rights Watch has long argued, these commissions are vulnerable to illegitimate political influence, permit the use of coerced evidence and hearsay, and place undue restrictions on the ability of military and civilian defense counsel to present an effective defense. The ruling, by raising questions about the determination of enemy combatant status, further shows that the process underlying the military commissions does not meet international fair trial standards.   “The Boumediene decision sends a clear signal to the Bush administration that they should close Guantanamo and stop holding people in indefinite detention without charge.”   Human Rights Watch believes that detainees who are implicated in terrorist crimes should be transferred to the federal court system for trial. In recent years, the federal courts have proven that they have capacity and expertise to handle complex terrorism prosecutions involving evidence obtained overseas. Their rulings will have the credibility necessary to command respect worldwide.   “Today’s ruling puts an end to the Bush administration’s vision of unchecked executive power,” Roth said.
	Broken Laws, Broken Lives by AP / Physicians for Human Rights USA   December 2008   Rumsfeld, top aides singled out in US torture report. (AP)   The US Senate Armed Services Committee has singled out former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top aides for approving inhumane interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan and Iraq.   General Richard Myers, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is also singled out for approving inhumane interrogation techniques, which the former general counsel of the navy, Alberto Mora, said had led to attacks on US troops in Iraq.   "There are serving US flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of US combat deaths in Iraq — as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat — are, respectively, the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo," Mr Mora said.   The report, which took 18 months to compile, was issued jointly by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the panel, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican.   It said the techniques used were "based, in part, on Chinese communist techniques used during the Korean War to elicit false confessions" from captured US prisoners.   Instructors from the Pentagon agency that trains soldiers in resisting such treatment were sent to Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq to assist in adapting the methods, it said. The report said senior Defence Department officials approached that agency about techniques as early as December 2001. The head of the agency responded that his officials "stand ready to assist" Pentagon efforts at prisoner "exploitation".   The abusive techniques — water boarding, nudity, stress positions and use of dogs — were "at odds with the commitment to humane treatment of detainees in US custody" and inconsistent with the goal of collecting accurate information, the report concluded.   Those abuses "cannot be chalked up to the actions of a few bad apples," said Senator Levin, referring to a line used by former deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz in an attempt to play down the scandal. Even so, the report does not call for further investigation or punishment.   It traced the practices to President George Bush''s written determination in February 2002 that the 1949 Geneva Convention did not apply to suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.   Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, and other cabinet officers took part in meetings where specific interrogation techniques were discussed, the report said.   The report said Mr Rumsfeld''s authorisation of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay "was a direct cause of detainee abuse there".   General Myers'' decision to cut short a legal and policy review of the techniques "undermined the military''s review process", the report said.   According to an executive summary of the report, the commander at Guantanamo, Major-General Geoffrey Miller, ignored warnings from Pentagon and FBI investigators that the techniques were "potentially unlawful".   June 2008   It is no secret that American military personnel at Guantanamo Bay and other US-run prisons have stripped detainees naked, used dogs to scare them, hooded them, and deprived them of sleep.   But an 18-month-long US Senate investigation has been trying to get to the bottom of who thought of these techniques, and who authorised them.   Documents have been uncovered showing that senior Pentagon officials played a more active role than previously thought in developing some of the methods.   A senior staffer for Vice-President Dick Cheney also went to Guantanamo Bay to discuss how interrogations were conducted.   But the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Democrat Carl Levin, says it is not simply a case of a few bad apples acting on their own.   "The truth is that senior officials in the US Government sought information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorised their use against detainees," Senator Levin said.   The Senate investigation shows that military officials, including psychologists, who had the job of training US troops to resist enemy interrogations, were asked to give Pentagon lawyers a list of tactics that could be used in prisons like Guantanamo Bay.   Previously secret memos also show that in July 2002 the Pentagon"s former top civilian lawyer directed his staff to start researching the use of practices like stress positions and sensory deprivation.   William Haynes then went to Guantanamo a few months later, with the vice-president"s senior counsel, to talk about the techniques.   Senator Levin was scathing in his appraisal of what the new techniques led to. "When Secretary Rumsfeld approved the use of abusive techniques against detainees he unleashed a virus which ultimately infected interrogation operations conducted by the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq," Senator Levin said.   While it has been known for some time that military lawyers voiced strong objections to the harsh interrogation techniques in early 2003, for the first time the new memos show that those concerns were being raised in November 2002 before Mr Rumsfeld officially approved them.   In an interview with America"s ABC News, Barak Obama noted that the Islamist extremists behind the first bomb attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993 were brought to civilian justice and are now behind bars.   Under the Bush administration"s policies since 9/11, "not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world", Obama said.   The policies had "given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, "Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims," he said.   Mr Obama"s comments follows the US Supreme Court ruling last week that detainees at the Guantanamo military base have a right to challenge their detention in US courts.   June 2008   Justice Denied, by Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret.)   The following is the preface written for the report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives, released by Physicians For Human Rights:   This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.   The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified.   Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted-both on America’s institutions and our nation’s founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.   In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.   After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed torture. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account..   * Maj. General Taguba led the US Army’s official investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and testified before Congress on his findings in May 2004. Visit the related web page
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