Timothy Lawson & Riccardo Armillei
Three Tamil asylum seekers from Sri Lanka detained in Maribyrnong detention centre have agreed to share their experiences inside Maribyrnong. They are terrified that talking to journalists may cause their applications for refugee status to be impeded or denied. Due to this fear, these three men have agreed to share their experiences on the condition of anonymity.
The asylum seekers, “clients” as they are called by the Serco personnel, came to Australia to escape persecution, harassment, torture and violence. They had hoped for asylum and what have they found instead? A prison.
They refer to themselves as “clients” as well, which is clearly a euphemism for prisoners.
Many spend months and even years in these detention facilities, moving from centre to centre, often divided from their families in the process.
They wait for any information relating to their destiny. They are largely kept in the dark about information relating to the timeframe in which they can expect their claim to be processed.
The privatized prison industry is a growing international phenomenon. Prisoners are physically confined or interned by third party companies that typically enter into contractual agreements with local, state, or federal governments. Those government entities then pay a per diem or monthly rate for each prisoner confined in the facility.
Today, the privatization of prisons refers both to the takeover of existing public facilities by private operators and to the building and operation of new and additional prisons by for-profit prison companies. Private companies operate 264 correctional facilities in the Unites States and house almost 99,000 adult offenders.
Companies operating such facilities include the Corrections Corporation of America, the Geo Group, Inc, and Community Education Centers. The GEO Group was formerly known as Wackenhut Securities, and includes the Cornell Companies, which merged with GEO in 2010.
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has a capacity of more than 80,000 beds in 65 correctional facilities. The GEO Group operates 61 facilities with a capacity of 49,000 offender beds. Most privately run facilities are located in the southern and western portions of the United States and include both state and federal offenders.
The fight enroute to Gaza between the worldwide volunteers and the governments of Israel, the United States and Greece—has been portrayed from two opposite sides, yes, but opposite in a political and moral compass completely broken: on one side, the flotilla argues the desperate need of help and hope with which the Gazans live every day while, on the other side, the authorities trying to block the flotilla have accused it of being “ready to kill Israeli soldiers” or—more rhetorically convenient—“ready to kill Jews” due to the allegedly obscure intentions behind “Muhammad Sawalha, a senior UK-based Muslim Brotherhood figure connected to Hamas”, according to the website Gaza Flotilla 101.
On June 23, 2011, Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights published a letter by world renowned Bahrain human rights advocate, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja. *Image via Frontline Defenders Abdulhadi Alkhawaja (left) with Margaret Sekaggya(right)
Alkhawaja, who was arrested in April and 21 others were charged by the Bahraini government with ”organising and managing a terrorist organisation” and “attempt to overthrow the government by force and in liaison with a terrorist organisation working for a foreign country”.
On Wednesday, June 22, AlKhawaja, a dual Bahraini and Danish, was convicted for life alongside 20 other defendants, seven of which were also sentenced to life. Maryam Alkhawaja" told the Guardian this week that Alkhawaja "was beaten and forcefully removed from the court. My sister [Zainab al-Khawaja]stood up and chanted, 'Allahu akbar' [God is great], and she was forcefully removed from the court and arrested. She was charged with contempt of court but then was made to sign a pledge not to speak in court again and then she was released."
While at Netroots Nation 2011, I had the privilege of speaking to Lieutenant Dan Choi, who served in the US Army infantry, went to war in Iraq and graduated from West Point with a degree in Arabic.
Choi was kicked out of the military under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) about one year ago. At Netroots Nation, Choi celebrated his one year "anniversary or birthday" as a civilian. He also noted that despite DADT being repealed there are still soldiers getting kicked out of the military for being gay.
The US government is putting Lt. Dan Choi on trial August 29 for "demonstrating in front of the White House in November of last year." Choi refuses to plead guilty or accept any kind of deal.
“I believe this Administration is making a grave mistake in limiting the areas, times and manners that free speech should be allowed," declares Choi. And adds nobody should be intimidated into not protesting.
I spoke to Choi the day after he had gone with Hamsher to support Bradley Manning Support Network co-founder David House, as he went before a federal grand jury investigating individuals supportive of alleged military whistleblower Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks. Choi says House is an "American hero" and "our situations are exactly the same."
Those who read President Barack Obama’s speech will likely be reading to find hints of when the conflict might finally come to an end. Support for a pullout from Afghanistan is at an all-time high, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. But, there is little reason to put much stock in the fact that ten thousand troops will be leaving Afghanistan this summer. Withdrawing a number of troops around July of 2011 was always part of a plan, a way of deftly managing public opinion.
When Obama went ahead and added thirty thousand troops, he knew, as shown in Bob Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars he had two years with the public. He understood the perils of escalating a war, as retired Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, retired Gen. James L. Jones and Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute all offered a level of dissent against Admiral Mike Mullen, Gen. David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. And, Obama allegedly told Vice President Joe Biden in private to oppose a big troop buildup but could not stand up to military brass. In the end, though, he was able to set a withdrawal timetable of ending the war by 2014.
Former congresswomen and Green Party presidential candidate has just returned from a fact finding mission to Libya. While there she talked [YouTube 03:31] with a Qaddafi supporter in the hospital after being injured by US/NATO bombing. He said "People in Germany have Hitler. People in Italy have Mussolini. It does not matter if they are good or not; they have [a] hero. Why [not] let us have [a] hero? We like him [Qaddafi]." McKinney responded "yeah, right."
The ANSWER Coalition sponsored nationwide speaking tour of Cynthia McKinney: Eyewitness Libya started in Los Angeles on Saturday, 18 June 2011. This was at the Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire where many progressive events take place. Almost two hundred people showed up. Among them was a group of about two dozen Libyans and Libyan-Americans, some of which clearly associated themselves with the Free Libya movement, the tricolor flag of the Libyan opposition was much in evidence not only as flags but as hats, scarfs and jackets. All these Libyans were clearly anti-Qaddafi.
Authored by Stephen Soldz.
Those of us who opposed the Bush administration torture program have been demoralized by the lack of accountability for the numerous abuses committed as part of that program. President Obama decried torture, and said he would end it, but he also said he wanted to "look forward, not back," apparently precluding investigations of the abuses committed by the previous administration.
The Obama administration has not merely refused to initiate criminal investigations of those who approved and ordered the Bush-Cheney torture program. They have declined even to support a Commission of Inquiry to explore what happened in a non-judicial forum. Further, the administration used every legal tool available including spurious arguments about national security in US courts and diplomatic pressure on foreign governments to stymie efforts at accountability through ethics complaints, domestic civil trials, and foreign criminal cases for the crimes committed by predecessors.
Over the last few years, as one avenue of accountability after another was closed, it looked as if the torture program would be protected as carefully by the Obama administration as it was by the Bush administration. The result, many feared, was that torture would remain an available tool of the state, to be dragged out by future administrations who could cite the lack of accountability for Bush torture by a Democratic administration as evidence of a bipartisan consensus that torture really isn't that bad. Many human rights experts have argued that future courts, too, could view the current lack of accountability as a legal precedent, potentially further shielding future torturers.
Poland is under increasing pressure to investigate fully whether the CIA operated secret torture and detention facilities in Stare Kiejkuty. As Peter Kemp predicted, the European Parliament has now intervened. In a resolution from the eighth of June it says that it:
"5. Reiterates its call to the US authorities to review the military commissions system to ensure fair trials, to close Guantánamo, to prohibit in any circumstances the use of torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, indefinite detention without trial and enforced disappearances, and reminds the EU institutions and Member States of their duty not to collaborate in, or cover up, such acts prohibited by international, European and national law;"
"7. Calls on the EU and Member States authorities, as well as the US authorities, to ensure that full, fair, effective, independent and impartial inquiries and investigations are carried out into human rights violations and crimes under international, European and national law, and to bring to justice those responsible, including in the framework of the CIA extraordinary renditions and secret prisons programme;"
In the meantime, former MEP Józef Pinior reiterated his allegations against former members of the Polish government, claiming that there was a document signed by the then prime minister Leszek Miller regulating the operations of a secret CIA detention facility in Stare Kiejkuty, also defining the status of corpses inside the facility.
Omar Deghayes was born the son of a prominent Libyan lawyer, an "opponent of the increasingly totalitarian Gaddafi" later taken away by the Libyan authorities and killed. After his father's death, Omar Deghayes settled with his family in Saltdean, Great Britian. As a British resident and student of law, Deghayes was imprisoned in Guantanamo for six years after he was abducted from Pakistan and sold for bounty to the United States military. As many of his interviews rightly point out, Mr. Deghayes lost an eye after it was gouged by a Guantanamo guard.
You were captured and detained between May 2002 and Dec 2007?
2007 May...April? Yes. I think. Probably May or April…yes.
Do you recall where you were held? Were you going from one camp to another? Do you remember those dates...?
No. It's going to be very difficult because when we were in the prisons in Guantanamo, we had no idea of dates or time.
It was difficult to...we didn't have any watches. We weren’t allowed to know dates or things...I think until 2005, when the lawyers started to come in…we started to have some idea of the dates.
And then after that I think 2006 we were allowed to know what time...they had time...a big clock hanging in some of the...not the cells...but in the middle in between the cells. So, it would be difficult to say which dates I was in which prison and so on...
Do you have a recollection of the places that you were actually held?
Yes. Yes. I do. Yes. Even though we weren't allowed to even know that. But we eventually did know where we are.
Where were you first?
I was first in Lahore. I was kept in Lahore prison for two months. And I think it was a maximum security in Lahore. Kind of a fortress, which is made special for, I think, terrorism cases and things like that. There are some Pakistani people there. And some Arabs.
On the 30th of March, Polish daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza published a fateful article that ultimately led to a criminal investigation. It detailed a document commissioned by Warsaw prosecutor Jerzy Mierzewski, who was then in charge of the investigation into alleged US detention facilities on Polish soil. He had asked external experts for advice on a variety of legal matters. After the external evaluation arrived, Mierzewski was removed from the investigation. Gazeta Wyborcza obtained the 50 page document by unknown means and published extracts from it. As a consequence of this publication, the newspaper itself became the focus of a criminal investigation.
This move came shortly after lawyers acting on behalf of a Guantanamo detainee filed a complaint against Poland at the European Court of Human Rights, and shortly before President Obama's visit to Poland.
According to the Gazeta Wyborcza article, Mierzewski had planned to file charges of breach of the constitution, false imprisonment and assistance in crimes against humanity, and had asked for advice, amongst other things, on the following matters:
- Does international law cover the operations of detention centers for people who are suspected of being terrorists?
- Does the legal framework of a country in which such a detention center exists have the power to shut it down?
- Does a confession that a person - who has been suspected of terrorist activity and has been detained - is a member of al Qaida have any influence on their legal status?
- What does it mean for the legal status of this person that he is detained outside a battlefield or an occupied area?
He received the following answers:
- There is no legal framework allowing foreign agencies to open any facilities in Poland which are beyond our control.
According to Gazeta Wyborcza, Jerzy Mierzewski, the prosecutor investigating alleged CIA prisons on Polish territory, was removed from the case because he had planned to file charges of breach of the constitution, false imprisonment and assistance in crimes against humanity.
This move came shortly after a lawyer acting for a Guantanamo detainee filed a complaint against Poland at the European Court of Human Rights, and a week before President Obama's visit to Poland.
Recent days have seen a number of articles on alleged CIA rendition flights and prisons on Polish territory in the Polish press. These were also prompted by a statement former MEP Józef Pinior made to Gazeta Wyborcza, saying that there is a memorandum signed by former PM Leszek Miller regulating the operations of a planned CIA prison on Polish territory. Miller strongly denies this.
For other WL Central coverage on the topic please see here.
Prism Magazine, founded by Maher Arar, will be broadcasting a livestream discussion on Sunday May 29 at 10:00am EST. Jeff Sallot, an instructor of Journalism at Carleton University and former Globe and Mail Bureau Chief, will host a discussion on the Canadian and American “No-Fly Lists” and their impact on civil liberties. Confirmed guests are Roch Tassé, Ben Wizner and Moazzam Begg.
Moazzam Begg was refused board on a direct Air Canada flight from London to Toronto last week, preventing him from speaking at a Conference on Islamophobia and The Politics of Fear at the Islamic Society of York Region, Toronto Canada, on May 21, as well as two other speaking engagements in Canada.
The livestream will be available at both the following sites:
http://www.livestream.com/prismmagazine
and
http://www.prism-magazine.com/prism-tv/
Infographic credit: JESS3.
Cables released from WikiLeaks provide important material in the ‘evidence war’ between ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and Kenyan politician William Ruto.
The cables support Moreno-Ocampo’s arguments that exposing information about critical witnesses would be a severe threat to them and that allegations on Ruto’s involvement in the extrajudicial killings in 2007-2008 post-election violence are recognized by the U.S. embassy, which is far from ‘rubbish rumors picked up by rag blogs’ as Ruto criticized the evidences the allegation is based on.
William Ruto, the Waki Commission, and the tragedy of extrajudicial killings during 2007-2008 post-election violence in Kenya
Extrajudicial killings during 2007-2008 post-election period in Kenya has been condemned internationally, mainly by the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial killings, Alston. WikiLeaks received the Amnesty 2009 New Media Award due to its notable work on leaking and reporting about the hundreds of extrajudicial killings tacitly approved by the Kibaki government and widely conducted by Kenyan Police force working with armed militias.
Among the leaked material is a report titled The Cry of Blood: Report on Extra-Judicial Killings and Disappearances, which is written by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR). The UN acknowledged the report’s credibility after confirming that the information found in the report is backed by investigation results of other civil society organizations and that of the preliminary research done by UN Special Rapporteur team in 2009.
Below are photographs taken as evidences of extrajudicial killings in the report:
"The only crime in my view, equal to willful inhumanity is the crime of indifference, silence and forgetting."
Dennis Edney, Lawyer For Omar Khadr speaks on Fear, Injustice and his Guantanamo visits in a Conference on Islamophobia and The Politics of Fear at Islamic Society of York Region, Toronto Canada, May 21, 2011. This is the conference that Moazzam Begg was denied permission to board a direct Air Canada flight from London to Toronto to speak at "because of US policy" and the extremely unlikely possibility that the flight may be diverted into US air space.
The following are transcribed excerpts from Dennis Edney's speech.
What we are witnessing is the constant drip of sanity slipping from our grasp as our apathy has allowed whispers of anti-Muslim sentiment to become part of the mainstream on conversation.
On Guantanamo protecting us: We want to protect ourselves from the voice of people like Moazzam Begg.
Mohammad Karim Abedi, a member of the Iranian Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, announced last week that Iran will launch an English news group, The Human Rights News Agency, to publicize human rights violations in the west. Today, Chairwoman of the Human Rights Committee of the Parliament (Majlis) Zohreh Elahian told Fars News Agency, that human rights violations from countries such as the United States and Britain are grave. She called on Iranian NGO's to increase publicity around these violations.
On May 13 Amnesty International published a report on the United States, which summarized:"Forty-six people were executed during the year, and reports of excessive use of force and cruel prison conditions continued. Scores of men remained in indefinite military detention in Guantánamo as President Obama's one-year deadline for closure of the facility there came and went. Military commission proceedings were conducted in a handful of cases, and the only Guantánamo detainee so far transferred to the US mainland for prosecution in a federal court was tried and convicted. Hundreds of people remained held in US military custody in the US detention facility on the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. The US authorities blocked efforts to secure accountability and remedy for crimes under international law committed against detainees previously subjected to the USA's secret detention and rendition programme."
Amnesty expressed concern at the "Impunity" granted criminals in the US, pointing out "There continued to be an absence of accountability and remedy for the human rights violations, including the crimes under international law of torture and enforced disappearance, committed as part of the USA's programme of secret detention and rendition."
In the light of President Obama's visit to Europe this week, I would like to take the opportunity to suggest some reading. It is an extraordinary document, a report compiled by Swiss politician Dick Marty for the Council of Europe: "Alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states".
http://assembly.coe.int/CommitteeDocs/2006/20060606_Ejdoc162006PartII-FI...
The full text, which has been available online for years, details CIA rendition flights within Europe. According to this report, several European countries facilitated the transfer of detainees to torture camps.
The report also lists a military facility in Stare Kiejkuty, Poland, and nearby Szymany airport as detainee drop off points (see page 17 f.). In the light of a current Polish criminal investigation into alleged CIA rendition flights to and from Szymany, a recent complaint against Poland at the European Court of Human Rights, and President Obama's visit to this country I urge everybody to have a look at this document. It clearly lists information on flights and dates of arrivals.
Many news outlets around the world reported about these rendition flights. On Stare Kiejkuty, these articles might be of interest:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6212843.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jan/04/politics.usa
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,621450,00.html
It seems that it was very easy for journalists and Dick Marty to get hold of evidence; one is left wondering why the investigation in Poland is proceeding at a snail's pace.
The Polish press has been keeping the topic in the public's perception over the past years.
Please also take a moment to look up the coordinates 53.631111, 21.078889 on a satellite map of your choice. Various accounts speak about an isolated building in the woods near a military facility which is surrounded by a wall. Can you spot it?
Updated information from Khadr's legal counsel states that the Supreme Court dismissal this morning related to a years old appeal from Khadr that was actually disallowed last fall by the terms of his plea deal, which ordered "he must dismiss all presently pending action."
“As part of his pre-trial agreement, he had to dismiss his claim against the government,” said his US military defense attorney Lt.-Col. Jackson. “Once the claim was dismissed, and the government accepted the dismissal, they still keep the caption (or heading) of the case as Khadr vs. Obama (as a way to keep the process) consistent, but he’s no longer a plaintiff on that.” Khadr's request for review was bundled with several other requests from other Guantanamo prisoners.
The request for clemency still stands and may be heard this week.
The US Supreme Court denied Guantanamo inmate Omar Khadr's request for clemency today. While a majority voted against granting the petition, Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor "indicated that they wanted to review the case." Courthouse News opines "Monday's contribution affirms the appearance that the court will defer to the mostly conservative D.C. Circuit on Guantanamo detention matters. The justices have not decided a detainee case in nearly three years."
O Sahara Ocidental é um território em disputa desde a década de 60 no norte da África, desde lá sendo palco de diversos conflitos. A área disputada localiza-se numa região no Sul do Marrocos, fazendo fronteira também com a Argélia e a Mauritânia. Na área de Tindouf, no sudoeste da Argélia, estão campos de refúgio da população Saaráui operados pela Polisario.
A Frente Popular de Liberação de Saguía-Hamra e Rio de Ouro, POLISARIO, www.saharalibre.es, é um movimento para a independência do Saara Ocidental ante o Marrocos. Constituída oficialmente em Maio de 1973 para forçar o fim da colonização espanhola, é uma derivação de organizações existentes desde os anos 50 na região. Desde 1979, a organização com sede em Tindouf é reconhecida pelas Nações Unidas desde 1979 como representante do povo do Saara Ocidental.
Telegramas recentemente divulgados pela organização Wikileaks denunciam extensa corrupção, violação de direitos humanos e de informação por parte da POLISARIO. O documento 09ALGIERS1117 aponta que "Contatos da Embaixada[Estado-unidense] com a UNHCR e ONGs Americanas trabalhando nos campos da Polisario perto de Tindouf dizem que indivíduos Saaráuis estiveram envolvidos em atividades de contrabando, mas o "governo" da Polisario pune severamente qualquer um que é pego traficando pessoas ou armas que poderiam ajudar terroristas". O mesmo documento reafirma posteriormente que "A Frente da Polisario responde violentamente a qualquer envolvimento com tráfico de armas, pessoas ou drogas".
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