By Avinash Samarth, ACLU National Security Project at 5:00pm
On November 28, the ACLU filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act seeking the U.S. military’s autopsy reports of the three men who died most recently while detained at Guantánamo Bay. The men—Adnan Latif, Awal Gul, and Hajji Nassim (also known as “Inayatullah”)—had been held at the prison camp indefinitely and without charge. They died on September 8, 2012, February 2, 2012, and May 18, 2011, respectively. You can read our request here.
By Avinash Samarth, ACLU National Security Project at 11:32am
Today the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to force the government to release statistics about its use of powerful electronic surveillance tools that law enforcement can use against any American simply by stating to a judge that it’s relevant to an investigation. The Department of Justice is required to disclose these statistics to Congress each year, yet routinely fails to do so. Today’s suit is an effort to compel the DOJ to follow the law (here are our complaint and our FOIA request).
By Avinash Samarth, ACLU National Security Project at 1:09pm
European nations are making slow but steady progress towards holding their own officials accountable for their complicity in the CIA's secret rendition, detention, and interrogation programs. This past Tuesday, members of the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament heard illuminating evidence on U.S.-run secret detention sites in Europe and on the complicity of some European government officials in the extrajudicial practices of the CIA in Europe during the Bush years.
By Avinash Samarth, ACLU National Security Project at 4:58pm
The political gulf between American policy and European policy on capital punishment widened further today as the European Commission released its decision to tighten export controls for some key materials used in the execution or cruel treatment of prisoners. The new policy applies expressly to the exportation of such goods by European countries to nations that still engage in capital punishment or torture.
By Avinash Samarth, ACLU National Security Project at 10:51am
As alleged ‘Wikileak-er’ Pfc. Bradley Manning faces his highly anticipated hearing this week, the government will face its own hearing today in a suit brought by the ACLU’s Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology and the ACLU of Massachusetts on behalf of a co-founder of the Bradley Manning Support Network, David House.
By Avinash Samarth, ACLU National Security Project at 4:57pm
Tomorrow is Human Rights Day and will mark the 63rd anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR, created in response to the egregious atrocities of the Second World War, is the most foundational and internationally recognized human rights document ever developed.
The United States has a long tradition of leading the cause of human rights worldwide. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s historic 1941 State of the Union address articulated “four freedoms” that ought to be guaranteed for all humans: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Seven years later, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and the United States played a central role in the drafting of the UDHR, and the “four freedoms” outlined by F.D.R. were explicitly incorporated into the document’s preamble.
By Avinash Samarth, ACLU National Security Project at 3:51pm
Yesterday, in Warsaw, Poland, Jamil Dakwar of the ACLU Human Rights Program delivered a statement to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) addressing the continued use of capital punishment in the United States.
