By Zach Levine, ACLU National Security Project at 5:18pm
With the world watching, a pre-trial hearing got underway this week in the Guantánamo military commission prosecution of the five alleged 9/11 co-conspirators. Prime among the issues before the military judge was how transparent the commissions will be. The ACLU’s Hina Shamsi argued our motion in support of the public’s constitutional right of access to the proceedings – and against the government’s unconstitutional effort to prevent the public from hearing defendants’ testimony of their torture and abuse in U.S. custody.
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.
A message by Susan Sarandon. Have you seen Zero Dark Thirty? The movie, about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, has received rave reviews – it’s an Oscar contender – and if you enjoy a thriller, you should see it.
By Zachary Katznelson, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 5:33pm
Yesterday, a dark chapter in American history got that much more disgraceful. Attorney General Holder announced the closure of the last two open criminal inquiries into abusive interrogations by CIA officials. The pronouncement means that not a single CIA official will be prosecuted in federal courts for any of the abuse, torture or even death that took place at the hands of CIA officers and contractors.
By Mitra Ebadolahi, Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project at 10:47am
Artist's Work Keeps Human Realities of Torture Alive
Last autumn, Rajkamal Kahlon, a Berlin-based American artist, joined the ACLU as an artist-in-residence. Working out of our New York headquarters, Kahlon furthered an on-going project of hers called Did You Kiss the Dead Body? Visualizing Absence in the Archive of War. This week, she launched a new website compiling her stunning original images as well as texts and interviews with ACLU staff: DidYouKissTheDeadBody.com.
In recent years, several human rights bodies have faulted the U.S. for failing to live up to its international legal commitments to protect children in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. This week, the U.S. issued its written response to questions raised earlier this year by the United Nations committee charged with implementing the international treaty on the rights of children in armed conflict – and it contains some disturbing news: “Over the last several years the United States has captured more than 200 individuals under the age of 18” and held them in military custody, the U.S. report said.
By Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 10:58am
Today the Supreme Court was asked if federal officials responsible for the torture of an American citizen on American soil may be sued for damages under the Constitution.
By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 2:39pm
Nearly two years ago, a non-partisan, constitutional think tank called the Constitution Project assembled its blue-ribbon Task Force on Detainee Treatment to examine the treatment of detainees in the years following 9/11. Today, the Task Force released its report—a 550-page, comprehensive condemnation of the role of senior Bush administration officials in the torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody.
Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.
Trained in the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military interrogators and guards who tortured and dehumanized prisoners in U.S. custody after 9/11 were hardly without ethical bearings. But as Alberto Mora, former chief counsel of the Navy, predicted when he discovered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had authorized previously banned interrogation techniques,
With controversy still swirling around the film Zero Dark Thirty and its misleading suggestion that torture put the CIA on the trail of Osama bin Laden, it's time to take the tools of filmmaking into our own hands to refocus the discussion on why torture is always wrong.
Many in the intelligence community - including former CIA and FBI agents with firsthand experience with interrogations - have spoken out about the film's inaccuracies, the fact that real intelligence is better produced through humane and lawful interrogations, and the fact that torture almost always leads to false information. But that's a message that is likely lost among most viewers, especially because the film opens with the words, "Based on Firsthand Accounts of Actual Events."
