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On the Right Track to Justice
Author: BobR    Date: 08/28/2009 12:21:28

As we've seen in the past, sometimes justice takes the slow train to its destination. Sometimes it requires enough heat coming from several sources to get up a big enough head of steam to leave the station. With regards to the U.S. involvement in torture, and the previous administration's complicity, that steam is building quickly.

It's pretty much common knowledge now that the CIA Inspector General recently released a heavily redacted report on the CIA's use of torture during the 2001-2003 time period. The report was disturbing enough to prompt Attorney General Holder to task a special prosecutor to investigate further. The first to get snared may likely be Tenet and Mueller, in both cases for perjury and conspiracy. Indictments for those crimes will likely get tongues moving for a plea bargain.

Add to this the revelation that the Bush Administration was using sleep deprivation as recently as 2007:
A year after the Bush administration abandoned its harshest interrogation methods, CIA operatives used severe sleep deprivation tactics against a terror detainee in late 2007, keeping him awake for six straight days with permission from government lawyers.

Interrogators kept the unidentified detainee awake by chaining him to the walls and floor of a cell, according to government officials and memos issued with an internal CIA report. The Obama administration released the internal report this week.

This is all too disturbing to ignore. It certainly hasn't been ignored outside of our borders. There is also pressure coming from the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay:
The former United Nations war crimes judge, who marks her first year in office next Tuesday, said she has used an "instinctive" blend of quiet diplomacy and public condemnation to highlight violations worldwide.

The U.S. Justice Department named a special prosecutor this week to investigate CIA interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States under then-President George W. Bush.

"Whenever people come under the jurisdiction of the United States, the United States has to be seen to be upholding the very high standards that they claim for their own citizens," Pillay told Reuters in her office overlooking Lake Geneva.

Any torture or death inflicted on suspects held by U.S. authorities in places including Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan should be part of this investigation, she said.

Asked whether it should go beyond establishing the criminal liability of CIA interrogators, Pillay replied: "That is international law on accountability -- that you do not stop at the foot soldiers, you go right up to the ultimate authority that is legally responsible."

"And these would include those who devised the policy, those who ordered it," said Pillay, a Tamil from South Africa.

Even if the U.S. stops short of prosecutions, the evidence will be there for international organizations to prosecute their own war crime tribunals. Perhaps they will be talking to Mohammed Jawad, who is suing the U.S. because he was 12 YEARS OLD when he was picked up and held by us for 7 years:
Montalvo, a US military lawyer, maintained Jawad was between 12 and 15 years old when he was detained. The Pentagon says he was 16 or 17 when arrested in Afghanistan on charges of throwing a grenade at a US convoy.

The lawyer said Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak had pledged to assist Jawad but stressed that does not mean "we will not pursue the US government to assist him in his transition".

Jawad's legal advisors would pursue punitive procedures in the US federal courts but were also pressing for his immediate food and housing expenses to be taken care of, given his lack of education, poor family and widowed mother.
[...]
In a convoluted case, a military judge tossed out most of the evidence against Jawad towards the end of 2008 and a federal prosecutor quit the case, saying the young Afghan's statements had been obtained through torture.


Perhaps I've missed it, but Cheney seems to be strangely quiet lately, I'm guessing that it's starting to dawn on him that - not unlike his policies for Iraq - his preemptive strikes were badly thought out. Will we see prosecutions for Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Tenet, Mueller, Yoo, and Gonzales?

It's possible if the Justice Train doesn't get derailed before it ever leaves the station.

 

57 comments (Latest Comment: 08/28/2009 23:23:36 by livingonli)
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