On 24 June 2008, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) filed a lawsuit at the National Court of Spain, the highest Spanish judicial council, against seven former senior Israeli military officials. These include former Defence Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, his former military advisor, Michael Herzog, former Israeli Army Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon and Dan Halutz, former Commander of the Israeli Air Force.
All of them were involved in the planning and execution of the “targeted assassination” of Salah Shehada, commander of the armed wing of Hamas, in Gaza city in July 2002. The Occupation dropped a 500 kg bomb on his house killing him and seventeen others, including his wife, his daughter, his guard, eight children (including a 2-month infant), two elderly men, and two women. In addition, seventy-seven other people were injured, eleven houses were completely destroyed and thirty-two houses damaged.
This lawsuit the Spanish National Court is now examining has been made possible by the cooperation of PCHR, a series of experienced and well known human rights lawyers and Palestinian and Spanish solidarity organizations (including the Arab Cause Solidarity Committee and the Al-Quds Association for Solidarity with People in Arab Countries).
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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:17 a.m. ET
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- A U.N. appeals court on Thursday overturned the war crimes conviction of Naser Oric, a Bosnian Muslim considered a war hero by many in his country for fighting Serbs in the embattled Srebrenica enclave during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
Oric, 41, was convicted two years ago by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal of failing to prevent the murder and torture of Serb captives in Srebrenica. But judges gave him a lenient two-year sentence and ordered his immediate release because of time spent in custody.
But appeals judges went even further, overturning both convictions because the original trial failed to establish that Oric had control over forces responsible for the crimes.
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Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory June 26, 2008
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[RAMALLAH, 26 June 2008] - On the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, DCI/PS releases further evidence that Israeli military forces in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) continue to abuse, threaten and torture Palestinian children.
Today, DCI/PS is releasing two case studies to draw attention to the continuing plight of Palestinian children, in particular, the 700 Palestinian children who are arrested, interrogated and often abused by the Israeli military and police each year.
In one case, Israeli interrogators beat 15-year-old Ibrahim S. over the course of several hours. Ibrahim was then threatened with sexual assault for the purpose of extracting his confession. The accusation, which Ibrahim kept denying, was that he had thrown stones at the Israeli army when it invaded his village the day before. A Military Court accepted Ibrahim’s confession and he was imprisoned in Israel for five months.
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By Kyle Crichton
It didn’t take much to set off the left-wing blogosphere. Just a sentence in the preface to a report last week by the Physicians for Human Rights on the long-term effects on former Guantanamo inmates of the torture they say they endured there, plus some new disclosures about the C.I.A.’s role in training interrogators at Guantanamo.
“After years of disclosures … there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” wrote retired Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, the officer who wrote a report on the Abu Ghraib scandal that, in pointing up the chain of command, caused extreme discomfort at the Pentagon and White House. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
The administration strongly denies that it condones torture or any other war crimes, and for most Americans the idea that senior officials or military officers could ultimately face criminal prosecution remains all but unimaginable. But such prosecutions are quite possible, though not before the International Criminal Court (which the U.S. does not recognize) or any other international court, such as those for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
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by Nat Hentoff
June 24th, 2008 12:00 AM
In a June 6 letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey—largely ignored by a press immersed in the future of Hillary Clinton—56 Democrats in the House of Representatives asked for "an immediate investigation with the appointment of a special counsel to determine whether actions taken by the President, his Cabinet, and other Administration officials are in violation of the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441) . . . and other U.S. and international laws."
This isn't front-page news?
The letter began with a brief account of the notorious facts about Abu Ghraib ("sexual exploitation and torture") and Guantánamo ("an independent investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross documented several . . . acts of torture . . . including soaking a prisoner's head in alcohol and lighting it on fire"). Nor was "coercive interrogation" in Afghanistan omitted: "In October 2005, The New York Times reported that three detainees were killed during interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq by CIA agents or CIA contractors."
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SEATTLE - Dozens of veterans from the U.S. occupation of Iraq converged in Seattle over the weekend to share stories of the atrocities being committed daily in Iraq.
The gathering was a continuation of the “Winter Soldier” hearings held in Silver Spring, Md., in March.
At the Seattle Town Hall, some 800 people gathered to hear the testimonies of veterans from Iraq. The event was sponsored by the Northwest Regional Iraq Veterans Against the War and endorsed by dozens of local and regional anti-war groups such as Veterans for Peace and Students for a Democratic Society.
“I watched Iraqi police bring in someone to interrogate,” said Seth Manzel, a vehicle commander and machine gunner in the U.S. Army, addressing the audience. “There were four men on the prisoner ... one was pummeling his kidneys with his fists, another was inserting a bottle up his rectum. It looked like a frat-house gang rape.”
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How Boris Johnson became a war criminalBy Boris Johnson Last Updated: 12:01am BST 24/06/2008
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By Lawrence Velvel
Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law
Prosecuting For War Crimes: As Lincoln Said, The Battle Of Today Is Not For Today Alone, But For A Vast Future.
June 24, 2008
Re Prosecuting For War Crimes: As Lincoln Said, The Battle Of Today
Is Not For Today Alone, But For A Vast Future.
In the last essay he wrote before his death, Arthur Schlesinger spoke of “national stupidity.” Here is what he said:
Sometimes, when I am particularly depressed, I ascribe our behavior to stupidity -- the stupidity of our leadership, the stupidity of our culture. Thirty years ago we suffered military defeat -- fighting an unwinnable war against a country about which we knew nothing and in which we had no vital interests at stake. Vietnam was bad enough, but to repeat the same experiment thirty years later in Iraq is a strong argument for a case of national stupidity.
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Related
Major General Taguba’s Comments Add Weight to Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment
White House invokes executive privilege in EPA inquiry, refuses to turn over subpoenaed documents.
FISA FILES
June 21, 2008
Kucinich Starts Online Impeachment Petition, Will Deliver For You
Filed under: Impeachment Progress News — Jodin Morey @ 2:01 pm
http://impeachment.kucinich.us — Only one Congressman had the personal courage and the profound respect for our Constitution to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and exercise his right and his responsibility to bring Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush - Ohio Representative Dennis J. Kucinich.
Beginning today, Americans who cherish our Democracy and the Constitutional principles upon which it was founded can stand up, speak out, and take action by signing the one official petition that carries the full and unqualified support of the one and only original sponsor of the impeachment resolution:
Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich.
And, if you request it, Congressman Kucinich will personally hand-deliver your message to your own Congressional Representative.
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Five Reasons Why FISA Bill May be Worse Than You Think
Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia ...
FISA FILES
U.S. Senate: Reference Home > How to... > contact U.S. Senators You have very little time so do it Monday latest!
The excuse that Obama's support for the FISA bill is politically shrewd is neither a defense of what he did nor a reason to refrain from loudly criticizing him for it.
Here's how you contact Obama
Democrats Legalize Bush's Crimes
Congress Prepares to GUT the Fourth Amendment!
[Congress has already gutted it(see "FISA FILES" above) Obama thinks that's OK. He's a senator so get on his case. You'd only waste your time with McLame]
OLBERMANN: Have the Democrats blinked or Mr. Feingold and Mr. Leahy are going to kill this in the Senate?
TURLEY: Well, this is more like a one-man staring contest. I mean, the Democrats never really were engaged in this. In fact, they repeatedly tried to cave in to the White House, only be stopped by civil libertarians and bloggers. And each time they would put it on the shelf, wait a few months, they did this before, reintroduced it with Jay Rockefeller‘s support, and then there was another great, you know, dustup and they pulled it back.
I think they‘re simply waiting to see if the public‘s interest will wane and we‘ll see that tomorrow, because this bill has, quite literally, no public value for citizens or civil liberties. It is reverse engineering, though the type of thing that the Bush administration is famous for, and now the Democrats are doing—that is to change the law to conform to past conduct.It‘s what any criminal would love to do. You rob a bank, go to the legislature, and change the law to say that robbing banks is lawful.
Added: June 19, 2008
June 19, 2008 MSNBC Keith Olbermann
Time to make a little noise, fellow bloggers.
Bush Blames Torture Policy on U.S. Troops: REAL journalist kicks his butt
General Accuses White House of War Crimes
Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by the US. : Clear Evidence of War Crimes
That quote in the headline doesn't come from Michael Moore or some commenter on Democratic Underground or Daily Kos.
It comes from a retired major general of the U.S. Army, Antonio Taguba (top). It was Taguba, you may recall, that President Bush asked to investigate the original claims of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib back in 2004.
His comment is in the preface to this report:
WASHINGTON - A Cambridge-based human rights organization said it has found medical evidence supporting the claims of 11 former detainees who were allegedly tortured while in American custody between 2001 and 2004, in what a former top US military investigator said amounts to evidence of war crimes.
Medical evaluations of the former inmates found injuries consistent with the alleged abuse, including the psychological effects of sensory deprivation and forced nudity as well as signs of "severe physical and sexual assault," Physicians for Human Rights said in a report scheduled for release today.
The report also alleges that in four of the cases, American health professionals appeared to have been complicit by denying the detainees medical care and observing the abuse but making no effort to stop it - charges that, if true, represent gross violations of medical ethics.
By the way, none of the 11, detained at Guantanamo or in Afghanistan and Iraq, was ever charged with a crime. What happened to them? The doctors found:
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Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by the US. : Clear Evidence of War Crimes
General Accuses WH of War Crimes
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, June 18, 2008; 12:44 PM
The two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability.
In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees." He called the abuse "systemic and illegal." And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in the New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement.
Now, in a preface to a Physicians for Human Rights report based on medical examinations of former detainees, Taguba adds an epilogue to his own investigation.
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Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by the US. : Clear Evidence of War Crimes
Added: June 17, 2008Farnoosh Hashemian Tells the Story of a Victim of US Torture
Ms. Hashemian led PHR's investigation of medical evidence of torture by the US.
Related
General Accuses White House of War Crimes
A story of torture and intense suffering (with video)
PHR Press Release: Medical Evidence Supports Detainees' Accounts of Torture in US Custody
PHR Press Release: US Torture of Detainees Caused Severe Pain, Long-Term Suffering
He was not a terrorist -- Guantanamo changed that
Defender of torture pleads amnesia
CIA gave torture tips to Pentagon: 'If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong'
Exams find evidence of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo
How many innocent people are going out of their minds today?
149 horrific pages
Broken Laws, Broken Lives
Medical Evidence of Torture by the US
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 war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.In PHR’s new report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives, we have for the first time medical evidence to confirm first-hand accounts of men who endured torture by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay. These men were never charged with any crime.
—Maj. General Antonio M. Taguba (USA-Ret.), preface to Broken Laws, Broken Lives
To download either the Executive Summary or the full text of the free report Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact, please register on our site with your name, email address and postal code. We promise to keep your name and contact information confidential. But we’d like to thank you for reading and keep you informed of ways to learn more and take action.
Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact
Broken Laws, Broken Lives - Executive Summary (860.7 KB, 285 hits)
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Broken Laws, Broken Lives - Full Report (1.9 MB, 375 hits)
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McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Mon, Jun. 16, 2008
Documents undercut Pentagon's denial of routine abuse
Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: June 15, 2008 08:55:29 PM
WASHINGTON — Although Defense Department officials deny that detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or in other American camps were routinely mistreated, official statements and court testimony undercut the claim.
FBI agents witnessed mistreatment at Guantanamo, according to accounts gathered for a Justice Department report released May 20, 2008. One agent reported seeing detainees in interrogation rooms "chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor. ... Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more."
Another agent wrote that in October of 2002, a U.S. Marine Corps captain squatted over a Quran during an interrogation to get a rise out of the detainee being questioned.
Documents from McClatchy's investigation
By Tish Wells | McClatchy Newspapers
LEGAL CASES REGARDING DETAINEES- Supreme Court Opinion: Boumediene v. Bush (.pdf)
- Boumediene v. Bush (.pdf)
- Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (.pdf)
- Razul v. Bush (.pdf)
- 377th Military Police Operation Manual Standard Operating Procedure, Enduring Freedom 2002 (.pdf)
- Corrections Special Course, Apply priorities of force within a confinement facility (.pdf)
- FM 34-52: Field Manual 34-52, Department of the Army on Intelligence Interrogation (.pdf)
- Sketch of hang positions used on detainees at Bagram (.pdf)
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Existence is resistance
Serene Assir examines a year of Israeli crimes and international complicity on the back of decades of occupation
With the deference of the international community, Israel has maintained a total blockade on Gaza since 9 June 2007.
Amnesty International described conditions borne from the siege as the gravest humanitarian crisis Gaza has experienced to date. Barring the Hamas-instigated 10-day breach of the border with Egypt in January-February 2008, Gaza's borders to the outside world have been blocked for the overwhelming majority of this time.
The siege directly violates the freedom of movement of Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinian residents. More than this, it also confirms and emboldens Israel's illegal occupation while sharpening the effects of unjustifiable sanctions imposed by the international community following the democratic election of Hamas to government in 2006.
It is the first time in history that the international community imposes sanctions on an occupied people. Effectively, what the Palestinian people of Gaza are subject to is a grotesquely perfected, long drawn-out war crime -- a crime with which everyone is rendered complicit if silent.
In legal terms, Israel has violated a number of binding international norms in the past year and will continue in violation until the occupation and siege ends.
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By Sherwood Ross
A conference to plan the prosecution of President Bush and other high administration officials for war crimes will be held September 13-14 at the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover .
"This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth."
"We must try to hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice," Velvel said. "And we must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war-criminals in the 1940s."
Velvel said past practice has been to allow U.S. officials responsible for war crimes in Viet Nam and elsewhere to enjoy immunity from prosecution upon leaving office. "President Johnson retired to his Texas ranch and his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was named to head the World Bank; Richard Nixon retired to San Clemente and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was allowed to grow richer and richer," Velvel said.
He noted in the years since the prosecution and punishment of German and Japanese leaders after World War Two those nation's leaders changed their countries' aggressor cultures. One cannot discount contributory cause and effect here, he said.
"For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders," Velvel said.
The conference will take up such issues as the nature of domestic and international crimes committed; which high-level Bush officials, including Federal judges and Members of Congress, are chargeable with war crimes; which foreign and domestic tribunals can be used to prosecute them; and the setting up of an umbrella coordinating committee with representatives of legal groups concerned about the war crimes such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, among others.
The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover was established in 1988 to provide an affordable, quality legal education to minorities, immigrants and students from low-income households that might otherwise be denied the opportunity to obtain a legal education and practice law. Its founder, Dean Velvel, has been honored by the National Law Journal and cited in various publications for his contributions to the reform of legal education.
(To attend or for further information Jeff Demers at demers@msl.edu (978) 681-0800; or Sherwood Ross, media consultant to MSL, at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com)
Written by Khalid Amayreh on 15. June 2008
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- Marc Parent