Human Rights Glance
A Justice Department lawyer yesterday urged a federal judge to continue the detention of six Algerians at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, contending they would "take up arms" and attack Americans if released.
The government alleges that the six Algerians were planning to go to Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces. But the detainees' lawyers said the men are innocent, never should have been confined and, after nearly seven years of captivity, should be freed. The lawyers described the detainees as hardworking family men.
TVNL Comment: If you were held without charges for seven years by some foreign governtment, would you want to 'take up arms' against those who imprisoned you? Just asking....
As the curtain falls on the Bush Administration, one set piece of the Administration's policy on torture has finally been ushered offstage. The Bybee Memo, a 2002 opinion authored by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, was brushed aside last week by a federal judge overseeing the nation's first-ever criminal trial of an American accused of torture abroad.
"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," wrote retired Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba in the preface to the report. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.
