Torture - Israel, Guanatamo, psychopathic leaders

[drhemp]

Torture - Israel, Guanatamo, psychopathic leaders, overiding importance of indicting the leaders

From David Halpin:

From: David Halpin <>
Date: 4 October 2009 14:09:51 GMT+01:00
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: Torture - Israel, Guanatamo, psychopathic leaders, overiding importance of indicting the leaders


This is not the BBC. The programme would not have been mounted. Andy Worthington and myself would not have appeared, and three of us could not have spoken the truth. 43 minutes You will find it worthwhile David

http://www.presstv.ir/programs/detail.aspx?sectionid=3510509&id=107732#107732

[accuracy]

Report: Norway has no plans to accept Guantanamo inmates

Europe News
Oct 19, 2009

Oslo - Norway has no plans to accept any inmates held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in an interview published Monday.

'At present it is not on the cards,' Store told the Oslo daily Verdens Gang, noting that Norway's asylum system was under great pressure.

In the interview, Store said the US had not raised the names of any specific inmates with Oslo or put any pressure on Norway to accept any inmates.

Store said Norway supported US President Barack Obama's plans to close the controversial prison camp.


http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1507868.php/Report-Norway-has-no-plans-to-accept-Guantanamo-inmates

[accuracy]

Top US court urged to reject Gitmo Uighur appeal

Wed Oct 21 2009

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/afp/20091021/capt.photo_1256167173138-1-0.jpg

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Supreme Court should bar Chinese Muslim Uighurs held at Guantanamo Bay from being freed in the United States, a top senator said Wednesday.

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the top US court should affirm a ruling blocking the 13 detainees, who have been cleared of all charges, from being released onto US soil.

"If it does, it will bring clarity to the debate over whether terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay ought to be transferred to the United States," said the senator, whose home state is Kentucky.

"And that clarity is this: if you want certitude that foreign terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay are not released into the United States, then don?t bring them here in the first place," he said.

McConnell underlined that US courts should leave control over US borders to the White House and Congress "including deciding whether and how foreign nationals outside our borders may be admitted within them."

A federal judge last year ordered the 13 men released in the US, where families from a large Uighur community were willing to host them.

But that decision was overturned on appeal, pushing their lawyers to turn to the Supreme Court in a bid to free the men, who hail from the Uighur Muslim minority in China's remote Xinjiang region.

The Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it would hear the case.

McConnell also warned that the case highlighted the dangers of bringing other detainees from the notorious facility to the United States, which would give them broader rights in the US legal system and could result in their release.

"Those risks do not exist if the Obama administration does not bring Guantanamo detainees into the United States, and instead tries them at the modern, multi-million dollar courtroom at Guantanamo Bay," he said.

The US Congress has approved legislation authorizing President Barack Obama to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to the US for trial provided they give notice and meet certain security requirements.

The men, who have been held on the US military base in Cuba for more than seven years, were among 22 Uighurs living in a self-contained camp in Afghanistan when the US-led invasion of the country began in October 2001.

Amid US administration fears that they face persecution if returned to China, five were freed in 2006 and sent to Albania, and four have been resettled in Bermuda.

Another six have accepted to go to the Pacific island nation of Palau, but are still waiting to be transferred from Guantanamo. But all 13 still remaining in the jail contend they should be released in the United States.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091021/pl_afp/usattacksguantanamojusticepoliticscongress;_ylt=Ag 0MaJM06i4c9CEOtqB.WHyyFz4D;_ylu=X3oDMTNoN3VkcGNoBG Fzc2V0A2FmcC8yMDA5MTAyMS91c2F0dGFja3NndWFudGFuYW1v anVzdGljZXBvbGl0aWNzY29uZ3Jlc3MEcG9zAzE4BHNlYwN5bl 9hcnRpY2xlX3N1bW1hcnlfbGlzdARzbGsDdG9wdXNjb3VydHVy

[accuracy]

Musicians crank up the volume on Guantanamo debate

By RICHARD LARDNER, Associated Press Writer Richard Lardner, Associated Press Writer – Thu Oct 22, 12:08 am ET 2009.

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20091021/capt.46c73dd1fe0b42c0a73c117ea0e3bf8b.guantanamo_a d_campaign_ny109.jpg


WASHINGTON – A coalition of mega-bands and singers outraged that music — including theirs — was cranked up to help break uncooperative detainees at Guantanamo Bay is joining retired military officers and liberal activists to rally support for President Barack Obama's push to shutter the Navy-run prison for terrorist suspects in Cuba.

Pearl Jam, R.E.M., and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails are among the musicians who have joined the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo, which launched Tuesday.

On behalf of the campaign, the National Security Archive in Washington is filing a Freedom of Information Act request seeking classified records that detail the use of loud music as an interrogation device.

"At Guantanamo, the U.S. government turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture," said Thomas Blanton, executive director of the archive, an independent, nongovernmental research institute.

Based on documents that already have been made public and interviews with former detainees, the archive says the playlist featured cuts from AC/DC, Britney Spears, the Bee Gees, Marilyn Manson and many other groups. The Meow mix cat food jingle, the Barney theme song and an assortment of Sesame Street tunes also were pumped into detainee cells.

A November 2008 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody makes several references to the use of loud music as an interrogation tool.

In one case interrogators played music to "stress" Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a citizen of Mauritania who has been at Guantanamo for more than seven years, because he believed music is forbidden, the report says.

Over a 10-day period in July 2003, Slahi was questioned by an interrogator called "Mr. X" while being "exposed to variable lighting patterns" and repeated playing of a song called "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" by the band Drowning Pool, according to the committee's report.

Maj. Diana Haynie, a spokeswoman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said loud music has not been used with detainees since the fall of 2003.

Jayne Huckerby, research director at New York University's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, said high-decibel music was also used against detainees at clandestine prisons run by the CIA.

As part of an earlier FOIA request for information about these "black sites," Huckerby received a top secret CIA document dated December 2005 in which the agency explains that the use of loud music or white noise is needed "to mask sound and prevent communication among detainees."

If decibel levels are kept at 79 or lower — roughly equivalent to a garbage disposal — detainee hearing won't be damaged, the agency said.

Huckerby says that music was not used as a "benign security tool," but as a way "to humiliate, terrify, punish, disorient and deprive detainees of sleep, in violation of international law."

CIA spokesman George Little said the CIA used music only for security, "not for punitive purposes — and at levels far below a live rock band."

Founders launched National Campaign to Close Guantanamo with ads on cable television urging Congress to reject the "failed Bush-Cheney policies."

Obama pledged to close the jail by January, but logistical snags and Republican opposition on Capitol Hill have made fulfilling that promise less likely. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who warns that closing the prison would endanger national security, has fueled the resistance.

A group opposing the closure of the prison, Keep America Safe, said in a statement Tuesday that those held at Guantanamo are dedicated to killing Americans.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091022/ap_en_mu/us_guantanamo_musicians_complaint;_ylt=AmaeO3WW5nI Z9wotA6kef5BxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTM2a2Y1MG9oBGFzc2V0A2F wLzIwMDkxMDIyL3VzX2d1YW50YW5hbW9fbXVzaWNpYW5zX2Nvb XBsYWludARwb3MDNQRzZWMDeW5fYXJ0aWNsZV9zdW1tYXJ5X2x pc3QEc2xrA211c2ljaWFuc2NyYQ--