By Steven Watt, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Human Rights Program & Valerie Brender, Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project at 1:29pm
Ramesh, a college graduate from India, borrowed $5,000 from a loan shark to pay a recruiting agent for the opportunity to work in Kuwait as a storekeeper at a wage of $800/month. His aims were simple: to provide a better life for himself and his family.
By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 10:46am
Of the thousands of now public documents related to the Bush administration's experiment with torture, a particularly remarkable one is a Justice Department memo from 30 May 2005 analyzing whether the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" violate the Convention Against Torture.
By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 4:41pm
In recognition of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, we launched the Torture Database, a compilation of over 100,000 pages of documents related to the Bush administration’s rendition, detention, and interrogation policies and practices. The database is our effort to provide meaningful public access to the primary documentation of torture and abuse during the years following September 11, 2001.
By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 6:44pm
June: best known for school ending, kids’ going to camp, longer days, and increasing temperatures. Also known for being Torture Awareness Month. And, tomorrow, June 26, is International Day in Support of Victims of Torture (as declared by the U.N. in 1997).
By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 1:56pm
A message for Alabama, Arkansas, and the entire United States: a sentencing scheme of mandatory life in prison without the possibility of parole for juvenile homicide offenders (JLWOP) is cruel and unusual punishment. That’s what the Supreme Court said today when it ruled in Miller v. AlabamaandJackson v. Hobbs that such sentencing schemes violate the Eight Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
We just marked the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, when five burglars associated with the White House were caught in the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC. The burglary unleashed a series of revelations of misdeeds that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon on August 9, 1974.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals just issued its opinion in the ACLU’s First Amendment lawsuit on behalf of Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo. He was fired from his job at the Congressional Research Service (part of the Library of Congress) in 2009 because of op-ed pieces he wrote in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to try some Gitmo detainees in federal courts and others in the military commissions system.
By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 1:52pm
Earlier this week, a federal appeals court ruled that the CIA can effectively decide for itself what Americans are allowed to learn about the torture committed in their name. At issue in the ACLU’s long-running Freedom of Information Act lawsuit was the agency’s right to withhold secret cables describing waterboarding; a photograph of a detainee, Abu Zubaydah, taken around the time that he was subjected to the “enhanced interrogation techniques”; and a short phrase that appears in several Justice Department memos referring to a “source of authority.”
This weekend, Bill Moyers’ public television show is devoting a full hour to Reckoning With Torture, the innovative film project by director Doug Liman, the ACLU, and PEN American Center. The movie will tell the story of America’s torture program using the government’s own documents. Here’s a preview of the upcoming Moyers & Company episode: http://billmoyers.com/segment/preview-reckoning-with-torture/
By Jamil Dakwar, Director, ACLU Human Rights Program at 11:54am
Tomorrow, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Europe's top human rights court based in Strasbourg, France, will hear arguments in El-Masri v. "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia." Tomorrow's hearing marks the first case to come before the court against a European nation for complicity in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program.
