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 Anna Estevao, National Security Project at 1:21pm
A Polish investigation into CIA black sites has made a meaningful step towards accountability for torture. Zbigniew Siematkowski, former chief of Polish intelligence services, has reportedly been charged with "unlawful deprivation of liberty" and "corporal punishment" against prisoners of war for facilitating the CIA's torture of terror suspects in Poland. Jameel Jaffer, ACLU Deputy Legal Director, had this reaction:
Here in the U.S., notwithstanding the fact that it is an election year, there is much that can be done by the Obama administration to make a tangible difference in the lives of racial and ethnic minorities.
By Devon Chaffee, Legislative Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:46pm
Today, the ACLU laid out concrete steps the Obama administration should take to live up to the human rights promises it made to the U.N. just over one year ago. The release of our new briefing paper coincides with the administration's announcement today of a newly created interagency process for implementing those commitments. The new process is a step in the right direction, and will establish working groups in areas such as criminal justice, immigration, and national security.
By Steven Watt, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Human Rights Program at 2:09pm
After being shut out of U.S. courts, yesterday we filed a case with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on behalf of three Afghans and three Iraqis who were tortured while held by the American military at detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Pictured above are Sherzad Kamal Khalid, left, and Thahe Mohammed Sabbar, in front of the White House during a visit to the U.S. in November 2005.)
By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 1:41pm
Next week the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in two historic cases. Incredibly, the cases — from Alabama, Miller v. Alabama, and Arkansas, Jackson v. Hobbs — concern the practice, unique to the United States, of imprisoning teenagers for the rest of their natural lives for crimes committed while they were still developing into adulthood. The U.S. stands utterly alone on this one — no other country in the world locks up its children for crimes committed before they could legally drive, join the military, vote or sometimes even get married.
By Alex Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project & Mitra Ebadolahi, Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project at 1:45pm
On Friday, the ACLU appeared before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to argue that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires the CIA to release documents describing its use of waterboarding. The simple question at the heart of the hearing was this: is waterboarding an "intelligence method" that can be protected from disclosure under FOIA? We argued that the answer — of course not — is easy because even the president himself has declared that waterboarding is illegal. Exposing official misconduct to public scrutiny is the chief purpose of FOIA. But it cannot serve that purpose if even officially confirmed illegality is protectable.
