For WL coverage and analysis of US Targeted Operation Kills Bin Laden: US Celebrates Victory in Fight Against Extremism please see this article. For WL analysis of news, media, and American politics as regards the War on Terror, please see The Entertainment Superpower and the American Theater of Cruelty
Crowds assembled last night on the eastern side of the site where the World Trade Center once stood, at the perimeter of what is referred to since the 9/11 terrorist attack as "Ground Zero".
The site has become a kind of tourists destination with vendors selling wares: from postcards, to flags, to T-shirts, and, finally, photos of the twin towers on fire. The trinket shops are repugnant to New Yorkers - who had been adults during 9/11 and who had witnessed people falling from the sky or the towers falling. They are a kind of creepy simulation of a genuine horror and tragedy.
I was told by several people, that crowds last night totaled several thousand. They assembled along the entire Eastern side of the site earlier in the evening.
By the time I arrived the crowd was at one intersection and made up mostly of young twenty-somethings.
One of the most interesting aspects last night was that there seemed to be two groups of people. One group was cheering and chanting, breaking out into songs, and the others were bystanders, quietly taking photographs. There were media cameras and journalist of all types.
There was not a large presence of FDNY (firemen) or NYPD (police) except those appointed to cordon off the streets from traffic. Those that were down there, were reserved. Many of them over by the gate to the site, saying prayers, standing quietly, or leaving flowers.
People shouted obscenities, "USA," "We are the Champions," and "Yes we did," wrapped themselves in flags, and one man was even seen smoking a cigar. The environment had the feel of a sporting event or a carnival.
Between January 11, 2002 and April 23, 2011 (one day before the latest Wikileaks release of the Guantanamo files) there were already about 15 million search entries, 5 million images, 25,000 videos, 6 thousand news items, 900 related books
and around 80 releated movies - 
including an American stoner styled 'comedy' pictured to your right - about the Guantanamo bay detention and torture camp.
While new information has been published in Wikileaks' latest release of the Guantanamo files, a plethora of evidence about Guantanamo's child detainees, its specious justification and illegality were already available in the public domain. That includes a Senate Armed Services Committee report that stated that detainees were murdered in US custody.
As Jason Leopold said in my interview with him last week, "Murdered. I am talking about murder. I mean, this report talks about how the torture program was based on the US military's resistance to interrogation survival training technique...So, yes, you are absolutely right there are a number of documents and a number of reports that are out there. The problem is that people, and that includes some journalists, frankly don't take the time to read it."
The image above of 'Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo' is not a comedy. It's a horror show. And, Guantanamo Bay is only the beginning of the entertainment superpower's 'theater of cruelty', coming to a town near you.
The institutions of society and of government - in other words, the organs of power, their structure, and their relationship to one another - the press, the legislature, the executive, and the judicial - no longer function in a manner that ensures their intended counter balance to tyranny. As a result our nation's civic, civil, and military power has been usurped by the highest bidder, some of them even foreign, and our democratic republic is drowning in a sea of Blackwater.
The White House is denying, contrary to reports, that it was seeking to blacklist the San Francisco Chronicle reporter, Carla Marinucci.
WL Central reported yesterday how the White House was seeking to punish the San Francisco news organization for reporting on a protest against the inhumane pretrial incarceration of alleged military whistleblower Bradley Manning, during a fundraiser for President Obama on the 21st of April.
It had been reported that the journalist Carla Marinucci's use of video from the event was being viewed as a transgression against the regulations covering "print-pool" invitations to White House events, and that this was to be used as the pretext for her exclusion from future events.
Now, the White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has issued a statement denying that any such punishments were being issued to the press for reporting on an issue of legitimate public interest:
The San Francisco Chronicle violated the coverage rules that they -– and every other media outlet –- agreed to as part of joining the press pool for that event. If they thought the rules were too restrictive they should have raised that at the beginning. However, no reporters have been banned from covering future presidential events and the White House of course would have no problem including any reporter who follows the rules in pool-only events.
Co-authored by Alexa O'Brien
WL Central's Heather Marsh spoke this week to Dennis Edney, the Canadian defense counsel for Guantanamo inmate Omar Khadr. Following is an excerpt from the interviews.
Photo credit: Colin Perkel / The Canadian Press
Transcript:
Have you read the Wikileaks release ... the Guantanamo file on Omar Khadr?
Yes.
Do you have any observations on that?
Of course. I do. What is it that I should say about that? Well, the one thing that is striking is how unreliable the evidence is to keep people in Guantanamo Bay. So much of the evidence relied upon and detaining people in Guantanamo Bay is second-hand hearsay, unreliable, and not the kind of evidence that would stand up in any court of law, proper court of law.
What a lot of people got ... or a lot of the media got out of Omar Khadr's report is that he was being treated not so much as a criminal, but as an intelligence asset because of his family.
Which is quite ... Absolutely. And what does it suggest? What intelligence does a fifteen year old boy have? What it was is that he was being held there because of his father. So, that's what they were looking for ... information about his father ... and so, his son has been left to rot in Guantanamo Bay because the Americans want to know about the father.
“We are getting into classified and unclassified. All this is just about me proving what I did. If I did the things I did, I would admit that I did. Things I didn’t do, I will say clearly I didn’t do them. But if the Tribunal is saying there are more classified things, classified information – they have to prove that – I am not asking to see the witnesses, if you have any. I need just their names to prove that your documents are true. I think this is not justice; it is not right. It hasn’t been witnessed in the whole human history. If you base your judgments or the accusations against me on classified information, then there is no need to continue. Let’s just stop it right here.” – Faris Muslim al-Ansari, Guantanamo Detainee (ISN #253) at his Combatant Status Review Tribunal in September 2004
Seventeen years old when captured in December 2001, Fais Muslim Al Ansari (ISN:253) went before a tribunal and had his status as an enemy combatant reviewed. In his testimony, it is apparent al-Ansari, who at the time was twenty years old, understood the injustice of the system he was being subjected to at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. This understanding likely led him to participate in a hunger strike with over one hundred other detainees, many of which would be force fed as they attempted to protest detention conditions and their inability to adequately dispute their continued detention.
The first Canadian Guantanamo file released was Omar Khadr, a much anticipated and very thin file that discussed the captured child's intelligence value as a son of a suspected Al Qaeda member and contributed nothing else of value or accuracy. (Except in this file, the 'medic' he was accused of killing in his trial is accurately described as a Special Forces soldier.)
The second widely anticipated Canadian file is that of 'Abdul Khadr', assumed to refer to Abdurahman Khadr, Omar's brother who has claimed he was in Guantanamo as a CIA plant. He was one of the ten detainees whose information was not included in the 2007 files published by the US Department of Defense under the Freedom of Information Act. Unfortunately the file does not match biographical details of any of the Khadr family (there are brothers Abdulkareem and Abdullah as well, but neither was ever in Guantanamo).
Jason Leopold, deputy managing editor of Truthout.org, tweeted "ive discovered that at least 1 of the photos in #Guantanamo files is not the detainee identified by military/govt. No idea who the person is"
So not only is all of the information about the suspects highly suspect, obtained from unreliable and tortured testimony and mistaken identities, some of the files are not even who they are labeled as.
Andy Worthington is a journalist, blogger, and author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison. He is also co-director of a new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”.
In 2009, Worthington revealed information about the demise of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi the former US 'ghost prisoner' whose alleged suicide death in a Libyan jail is still under suspicion.
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi's testimony, which was obtained under torture and coercion, and later recanted, was cited by the George W. Bush Administration in the months preceding the 2003 invasion of Iraq as evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
The head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch stated al-Libi was "Exhibit A" in hearings on the relationship between pre-Iraq War false intelligence and torture. Confirmation of al-Libi's location came two weeks prior to his death.
Most recently, Worthington partnered with WikiLeaks on its latest release of thousands of pages of documents regarding the cases of 758 out of 779 Guantanamo detainees dating between 2002 and 2008. The documents consist of memoranda from JTF-GTMO, the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay, to US Southern Command in Miami, Florida.
You can find Mr. Worthington on his Web site or on twitter @GuantanamoAndy.
Transcript
I wanted to talk to you a little bit about a couple things that you had mentioned when you were talking with Amy Goodwin on Democracy Now. One of the things you talked about was that ‘guidelines’ needed to be set up for filtering or discriminating the content that was found in the documents. Could you tell me a little bit about what that would be like in terms of application?
Well, you know, to be honest...a certain amount of hard work is required and some of that has already been done… I am glad to know…by some of the journalists who’ve been writing about it already...who have worked out that a lot of this supposed ‘body of evidence’ consists of allegations that have been made by a small number of prisoners… who have made repeated allegations against large numbers of their fellow prisoners, which have been called into doubt.
Now, you know, the doubts about this information are not necessarily mentioned, in fact, they are rarely mentioned in these military documents.
Jason Leopold is the deputy managing editor of Truthout.org and a co-founder of The Public Record.
As an investigative journalist he has written extensively on the Guantanamo Bay detention and torture camp, Enron, and the Military. The list goes on.
In February 2011, Leopold interview Australian David Hicks, a former Guantanamo detainee. It was Hicks' first interview about the torture and abuse he endured at Guantanamo, and his struggle with the injustice of US ex-judicial processes.
Leopold and his colleague, Jeffrey Kaye, have also investigated medical experiments at Guantanamo and psychological techniques used to design Bush's torture program.
His work has been published in The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Salon, The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Financial Times, Alternet, Z Magazine, Earth Island Journal, Homeland Security Today, and numerous other national and international publications.
Leopold was the recipient of the Project Censored award two times for his investigative work on Halliburton and Enron. He was awarded the Thomas Jefferson award by The Military Religious Freedom Foundation for a series of stories on the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. Military.
You can find him on twitter at @JasonLeopold.
What is particularly unique about the documents from the latest Wikileaks’ release?
*With research assistance from Heather Marsh
Pakistani national Naqib Ullah (also Naqibullah) was 14 years old and out doing an errand for his father when he was kidnapped from his village in Khan, Afghanistan by 11 men that called themselves, “Samoud’s people.” The men, according to Ullah, “forcibly raped him at gunpoint”. He was taken back to the men’s village encampment and “forced to do manual work.”
Ullah was in the camp for three days when, in December 2002, US forces raided the camp. The group had been forewarned. They ordered Ullah and others to stay behind and fight US forces. He was captured and had a weapon but it had not been fired. He was transported to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in January 2003 because the military believed he might have knowledge of “Taliban resistance efforts and local leaders.”
This teenager is just one of twenty-two juveniles who wound up in Guantanamo. And, with the release of the Gitmo Files by WikiLeaks, more details on the capture, transfer, detention and release of juvenile detainees are becoming known.
Article 1 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as “every human being below the age of eighteen years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier.”
David House tweets Wikileaks grand jury subpoenas are being issued
Bradley Manning friend and supporter David House tweeted Subpoenas are being issued in the WikiLeaks grand jury. Violations of Espionage Act. No further comment at this time. two hours after tweeting "Are you now, or have you ever been, a WikiLeaks supporter?"
Julian Assange's defense attorney Mark Stephens retweeted the subpoenas comment, but followed up with @lockean how do you know? and was answered by House @MarksLarks FBI is making house calls
And now from Wikileaks: Fresh subpoenas are being issued in the WikiLeaks Alexandra, VA secret grand jury in relation to the espionage act.
Write to Bradley Manning
Jonathan Getzschman has obtained the following information for anyone wanting to write to Bradley Manning. A large and ongoing volume of mail would remind his new home that we are still watching.
Bradley Manning 89289
830 Sabalu Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027
Letters will be rejected if they contain any of the following:
President Obama Makes a Fair Trial of Bradley Manning Impossible By Declaring Him Guilty
Authored by Kevin Zeese
The credibility of the military justice system is being undermined by the prosecution of Bradley Manning. His abusive punishment without trial violates his due process rights; his harsh treatment in solitary confinement-torture conditions violates the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment; and now the commander-in-chief has announced his guilt before trial making a fair trial impossible. A Bradley Manning exception to the Bill of Rights is developing as the Obama administration seeks Manning’s punishment no matter what constitutional protections they violate.
On Thursday April 21, 2011 in San Francisco a group of Bradley Manning supporters protested the prosecution of Manning at a Barack Obama fundraising event. One of Manning’s supporters was able to question the president directly afterwards and during the conversation, Obama said on videotape that Manning was guilty.
Can you imagine if the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamene’i, pronounced an Iranian military whistle blower “guilty” before any trial was held? Khamene’i is the commander-in-chief of all armed forces in Iran, just as President Obama is the commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed services. Would anyone in the United States think that a trial before Iranian military officers that followed such a pronouncement could be fair? The U.S. government would use the situation to make propaganda points about the phony justice system in Iran.
The release of the files should draw attention to the reality that, despite US President Barack Obama’s promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, the prison is still open. In fact, El Pais has posted analysis to complement coverage of the Guantanamo Files, which details how “legal and political setbacks” prevented Obama from closing the military prison:
Barack Obama criticized George W. Bush for orchestrating, executive order, a labyrinthine detention center that sent hundreds of terror suspects after the attacks of [September 11th] , condemning them to oblivion and without the right to a fair trial in civil court. Obama has perpetuated the shame of Guantánamo to the president's decision, also through an executive order to reinstate the military commissions created by Bush and formalize the system of indefinite detention, which offers the only solution to many of the 172 inmates who reside in the prison to rot within its walls.
There is no other solution. And there is none because the invention was conceived Guantanamo from violating the most basic principle of humanity and legality rules for governing the United States and the developed democracies for centuries. To send to whom the administration of George W. Bush considered suspected of violating U.S. and be soldiers of Al Qaeda, the legal architects of the "war on terror" was invented the concept of unlawful enemy combatants, thus bypassing the safeguards offered by the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war . Detainees in secret CIA prisons anywhere in the world began to land in Guantanamo in January 2002, hooded and shackled hand and foot.
It should draw attention to each of the individual reports and place them in the context of information that journalists have already reported. It should help us further understand what has been going on in the dark and murky military prison that has become so notorious and perhaps further color the world's understanding of documents the ACLU and other organizations have managed to obtain in the past years.
But, the New York Times has published coverage of the documents and did not obtain them from WikiLeaks. Also, according to Greg Mitchell, who has been covering WikiLeaks for TheNation.com with a daily blog since Cablegate began, “"WikiLeaks abruptly lifted the embargo Sunday night, after the organization became aware that the documents had been leaked to other news organizations, which were about to publish stories about them."
McClatchy Newspapers writes “the US military set up a human intelligence laboratory at Guantanamo,” the Washington Post details new classified military documents obtained by the “anti-secrecy organization” present “new details” of detainees whereabouts on Sept 11, 2001 and afterward and the Daily Telegraph reports that it has exposed “America’s own analysis of almost ten years of controversial interrogations on the world’s most dangerous terrorists.”
Months after news organizations reported the Guantanamo Files might be WikiLeaks’ next release, the files are now posted on the WikiLeaks website. Nearly 800 documents, memoranda from Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), the combined force in charge of the Guantanamo Bay prison to US Southern Command in Miami, Florida.
The memoranda do not detail torture or how detainees were interrogated. The reports from between 2002 and 2008 show how JTF-GTMO justified when to keep detainees and also when it chose to release detainees. In cases of detainees “released,” that detainee’s “transfer” is detailed to “the custody of his own government or that of some othergovernment.”
The reports represent not just JTF-GTMO but, according to WikiLeaks, they also represent the Criminal Investigation Task Force created by the Department of Defense to conduct interrogations and the Behavioral Science Teams (BSCTs) consisting of psychologists who had “a major say in “exploitation” of [detainees] in interrogations.”
The tenth episode of "This Week in WikiLeaks" features Iraq war veteran Ethan McCord and Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee member Kevin Zeese. McCord and Zeese have both appeared on "This Week in WikiLeaks." They are part of this week's episode because I recorded them talking at an event in New York City organized by World Can't Wait to promote a new short documentary, "Incident in New Baghdad."
Run time is about 1 hour for the episode.
To listen, click on the play button on the widget below:
Authored by Jonathan Getzchman
So I drove down to Leavenworth, Kansas today for a "Free Bradley Manning Rally" ... that was happening six weeks from now. I had a funny feeling something was wrong when I got to the address for the protest an hour late, and no one was there. The next funny feeling I had followed re-reading the two links I had seen about the rally ... I had read them both incorrectly.
Soooo ... Leavenworth. I'm here ... in a clash of decisions I sung, "Should I stay or should I go?"
I meditated for a bit, creating space to find out why I was here ... then a thought hit me: I wonder if I can ask for and receive an impromptu interview with Bradley Manning ... ask, sure ... receive? Hmmm ...
I took several deep breaths and decided I was doing nothing wrong, so no ill could befall me if I tried. I remembered that our brothers and sisters in the military are human beings like the rest of us, and they would understand my reasons.
I pulled up the driveway into the Leavenworth Prison (1300 Metropolitan ... where the rally was to be ... six weeks from now) passed the sign saying, "Vehicles may be subject to search/you must show ID" and accepted it as a possibility, parked and walked up the hill to the "Visitor processing center".
I opened an old school, screen porch door and looked inside to find a sharply dressed, black prison guard at a desk.
"Hello, I'm Jonathan Getzschman from RevolutionTruth.org. There is a "Free Bradley Manning" rally here on June 4th, and I was wondering if I could interview Mr. Manning before then ... like now."
"Who is Bradley Manning?" asked the guard.
After some explaining, the guard said, "You mean that military kid? He's two miles up the road at Fort Leavenworth Prison."
HAH! The rally was scheduled at the wrong address ... no longer my fault.
I asked the guard if he thought there was ANY chance I might have of interviewing Manning.
Oral hearing for Wikileaks Twitter appeal cancelled
Today's hearing of oral arguments has been cancelled in the appeal of last month's order over whether the US government has the right to access the online information of three Twitter users in aid of its WikiLeaks investigation, and also whether they can be informed of what other internet companies have turned over their information without notifying them. The three, Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir, US citizen Jacob Appelbaum and Rop Gonggrijp of the Netherlands, were all notified by Twitter of the order against their data. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have been assisting the three users with their challenge.
EFF earlier wrote "cooperating counsel John Keker of Keker and Van Nest will urge the court Friday to require the government to protect the First Amendment freedoms of speech and association of the Twitter users and the Fourth Amendment rights of the users in their locations. ACLU attorney Aden Fine will ask the court to unseal all documents related to other requests for private data".
US District Court Judge Liam O'Grady canceled the hearing and will instead issue a ruling after reading both sides' written briefs.
Obama on Manning: “He Broke the Law”
At a fundraiser for President Barack Obama at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, a group of progressive supporters of Bradley Manning paid tens of thousands of dollars to attend and disrupt the event. Oakland activist Naomi Pitcairn personally paid for tickets so people from her group could attend. The group sang a song with lyrics they wrote expressing their disgust with the way the Obama Administration has responded to Manning’s inhumane treatment.
Someone with the group also managed to confront President Obama on Manning. Obama’s handlers may have been preoccupied because in this clip that runs about a minute Obama opens up about what he thinks about what Manning did.
“People can have philosophical ideas about certain things,” President Obama explains. “But, look, I can’t conduct diplomacy on open source.” He then goes on to add that he has to abide by certain classified information rules or law and if he had released material like Manning did he’d be breaking the law.
Now, here is the remark that deserves the most attention: “We’re a nation of laws. We don’t individually make our decisions about how the laws operate.” He adds, “He broke the law.” Finally, before removing himself from the conversation, he says Manning “dumped” information and “it wasn’t the same thing” as what Daniel Ellsberg did because what Ellsberg leaked “wasn’t classified in the same way.”
This is our second interview in a series of interviews with former Guantanamo Bay detention camp guards and detainees.
Several current and former U.S. soldiers have expressed interest in speaking publicly about their experience at Guantanamo: including a CIA psychologist, interrogators, guards, and medical personnel. They are disgusted with what they witnessed or took part in at Guantanamo, but declined my request for an interview, because they fear opening themselves up to prosecution by the US government, which required them to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement.
I was also told that many are afraid of being prosecuted for war crimes, since low level soldiers are often the ones who shoulder the brunt of punishment and backlash; whereas higher ranking officials seem to escape scrutiny completely.
Terry Holdbrooks is a former guard at the Guantanamo Bay detention camps. He was stationed at GTMO in 2003 and 2004. During his time there, he converted to Islam. He is now a vocal critic of the camp. You can find him on twitter @BrotherMustafa
Defense attorneys for Canadian child soldier Omar Khadr, filed a motion yesterday requesting that Khadr's sentence be reduced from eight years to four. Defense claims that prosecutors had misled them into believing Khadr's plea bargain would be thrown out if they challenged the prosecution's star witness, a psychiatrist named Dr. Michael Welner. According to the motion, Army Col. Patrick Parrish, the judge presiding over Khadr’s case, joked that “Dr. Welner would have been as likely to be accurate if he used a Ouija board”.
Dr. Welner, who was called to assess the future danger to be expected from Khadr, wrote in his response to the clemency request, “I encountered.... an area where no systematic guidelines are chronicled and no actuarial measures are available.” Khadr’s lawyers write that Dr. Michael Welner's testimony was “unscientific” and “designed solely to inflame and mislead the jury.”
Welner's testimony, based on a brief interview with Khadr, covered a great deal of territory, including statements that Khadr's family was a big influence on him (he was captured at 15 and spent the ensuing eight years in Guantanamo), and simultaneously that because he had been imprisoned without trial in maximum security torture facilities for eight years, he had been "marinated in jihad" and could not be "deradicalized". Despite the statement that he was radicalized at Guantanamo, he could not be released to Canada because of insufficient "deradicalization" programs in Canada. Welnar also stated that a devout Muslim would not fit in in Canada.
The Pentagon’s decision to transfer the alleged whistleblower to WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, caught Manning’s defense by surprise. Manning’s move was not reported to his defense counsel until “twenty minutes before the Pentagon’s press briefing.” The way his defense learned of the move was the same way most citizens of the world did: by reading the information that was leaked to the Associated Press just before the briefing. Supporters of Manning are now watching closely, planning to call attention to any new violation of his rights that might occur.
David E. Coombs, Manning's lawyer, says the Pentagon had been thinking about moving Manning for a long time. So, the timing of the move did not surprise Manning’s lawyer David E. Coombs. He blogged:
The defense recently received reliable reports of a private meeting held on 13 January 2011, involving high-level Quantico officials where it was ordered that PFC Manning would remain in maximum custody and under prevention of injury watch indefinitely. The order to keep PFC Manning under these unduly harsh conditions was issued by a senior Quantico official who stated he would not risk anything happening “on his watch.” When challenged by a Brig psychiatrist present at the meeting that there was no mental health justification for the decision, the senior Quantico official issuing the order responded, “We will do whatever we want to do.” Based upon these statements and others, the defense was in the process of filing a writ of habeas corpus seeking a court ruling that the Quantico Brig violated PFC Manning’s constitutional right to due process. See United States ex. rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 74 S.Ct. 499 (1954) (violation of due process where result of board proceeding was predetermined); United States v. Anderson, 49 M.J. 575 (N.M. Ct. Crim. App. 1998) (illegal punishment where Marine Corps had an unwritten policy automatically placing certain detainees in MAX custody). The facts surrounding PFC Manning’s pretrial confinement at Quantico make it clear that his detention was not “in compliance with legal and regulatory standards in all respects” as maintained at the Pentagon press briefing.
The Bradley Manning Support Network, which formed to “provide prisoner support” during his imprisonment, put out a press release indicating concern over the move. Kevin Zeese, an organizer with the Support Network, says his “transfer from Virginia to Kansas limits his access to his civilian attorney David Coombs of Rhode Island. It also severely limits visitation opportunities by his East Coast family and friends.” Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist and the Support Network says, “It wasn’t a secret that we were preparing to rally one to two thousand for an upcoming DC-area pre-trial hearing.”
Is it possible he is being moved because the Bradley Manning Support Group has been successfully mobilizing people to protest his detention at Quantico? On March 20, a day that was declared Bradley Manning International Support Day, hundreds turned out for a protest at Quantico, just one day after the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. Reports from Firedoglake indicated “the ratio of police to protesters was disproportionate.” About one hundred regular police officers were present, six on horseback. Dozens of riot police with police dogs and then about a half-dozen military officers with gas masks carrying automatic weapons and tear gas were there. And, prior to the protest, the base the director of operations raised “the specter of infrastructure damage, vandalism or harassment to USMC personnel” through a “Threat Advisory” issued just prior to the planned protest.
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