Amnesty: Obama admin. still looks other way on torture

[Green_Lantern]

From Jan. 2010:

In litigation implicating the USA's international obligations to ensure accountability and remedy for past human rights violations, the Obama administration has all too often adopted a stance that promotes impunity and blocks remedy. For example, in its first year it has:

* invoked the state secrets privilege to seek dismissal of a lawsuit brought by five detainees for the human rights violations, including crimes under international law, they say they were subjected to in the CIA "rendition" programme;
* opposed a lawsuit brought by four UK nationals for the torture and arbitrary detention to which they say they were subjected in Guantánamo, the administration arguing that it was "not clearly established" at the time of the men's detention that they had the rights they said were violated and that the officials concerned were therefore "shielded" from civil liability. In December, the US Supreme Court sided with the administration and declined to take the case;
* intervened to petition a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit filed against John Yoo, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the US Justice Department, for the role the lawsuit claims he played in unlawful detention conditions and interrogation techniques. The Obama administration argued that the context of "the detention and treatment of those determined to be enemies during an armed conflict… implicating matters of national security and war powers" counselled against the "judicial creation of a money-damage remedy";
* maintained the Bush administration's denial of and opposition to access to lawyers and courts for those held at the US airbase in Bagram in Afghanistan, cementing the accountability gap for abuses committed there and the detainees’ lack of effective remedy for them;
* refused to release of photographs and other documentary material relating to detainee abuses.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGNAU2010012015042&lang=e

[Winterblues]

1. This makes me every bit as unhappy as the election of Obama made me happy.

I do not understand the rationale for this mindset. If laws were broken by high up officials then they should be subject to the rule of law. To say that it doesn't apply because it was done in the past is incomprehensible to me..

[EFerrari]

2. They don't get punished. They get promoted. n/t

[Hubert Flottz]

3. "doesn't apply because it was done in the past "

I agree...if that be the case, then why hold the working class people in prison for the crimes they committed in the past. How many people are dead because of the neocon's lies? They belong on death row if anyone in America does.

[katandmoon]

4. This is why the sight of Obama, even when he's calling out Repugs, continues to make me feel sick

[Green_Lantern]

7. calling them out...

Sounds more like "Please like me."

[Mari333]

5. knr . not even shocked anymore.

[earth mom]

6. Go Torture!

:sarcasm:

But that's essentially what GDPers are saying.

[Land Shark]

8. And the OP is just the portion having to do w/ litigation, which portion is merely the "highlights"

[TheKentuckian]

9. The not re-litigating the past line is about the lamest crap ever.

That is just screaming from the mountaintops that the laws are only for the little people. I have to assume that nearly every trial in the history of the country is a case of litigating the past, it isn't too typical to catch people red handed.

We can't ethically have a justice system in this country under such thinking.

[Vidar]

10. K&R.

[Green_Lantern]

11. it gets worse

Information which the administration had wanted to keep classified emerged in federal court earlier this month in the case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, namely that he had been subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" for 14 hours over five days at some point in secret CIA custody.

In its written briefing to the court, the Obama administration argued that its predecessor had "justifiably" treated Ghailani as an "intelligence asset" rather than a criminal defendant, despite a pre-existing indictment in US federal court against him at the time of his arrest in Pakistan in 2004.

It added that the Bush administration had made the "entirely reasonable" decision to continue to hold Ghailani without charge as an "enemy combatant". Ahmed Ghailani was held in secret CIA custody for two years, and in Guantánamo for nearly three more years, before being transferred to New York for trial in June 2009. No one has been brought to account for the human rights violations perpetrated against him.

[Wilms]

12. .