There wasn’t a more enthusiastic Obama supporter during the campaign than Andrew Sullivan. Here is what he wrote just now: The Obama administration will continue the cover-up of the alleged torture of the British resident. The argument is that revealing the extent of the man’s torture and abuse would reveal state secrets. No shit. This is a depressing sign that the Obama administration will protect the Bush-Cheney torture regime from the light of day. And with each decision to cover for their predecessors, the Obamaites become retroactively complicit in them. So what are they hiding from us? Wouldn’t you like to know? There is no viable excuse, or even mitigation, for what they did here.
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 Leave a comment |  Print This | Paola Totaro, London
A FLURRY of letters between the British Foreign Office and the US State Department has revealed that Washington did threaten to withdraw intelligence-sharing with Britain if documents related to the alleged torture of a British terrorism detainee in Guantanamo Bay were made public. The High Court in London said on Wednesday the Foreign Office had refused to allow the torture documents to be revealed because of a “threat” from Washington to stop sharing intelligence with Britain. The US warning, related to the case of British detainee Binyam Mohamed, was promptly denied by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who insisted that there had been no threat from the US to “break off intelligence co-operation”. But on Thursday night British broadcaster Channel 4 revealed that a letter dated August 21, 2008, from the US State Department, stated the consequences if a British court published American documents on the capture and interrogation of Mohamed. Leave a comment | Print This | KARACHI: The government should set a clear timeframe before the people of Pakistan for the safe return of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and her children from the US custody, Human Right Network demanded Monday. Addressing a news conference here, HRN President Intikhab Alam Suri said that family of Dr. Aafia is under threat. He said The Iraqi journalist who threw shoes at former US president George Bush will face trial next week on the original charge of assaulting a foreign leader. Muntazer al-Zaidi, 30, who is considered a hero by many Iraqis for his protest, has been in custody since the 14 December incident at Bush’s joint news conference with the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. Zaidi had been due to face trial in December on a charge of assaulting a foreign leader but his defence team won a delay as it sought to reduce the charges to simply insulting Bush. However, Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar, spokesman for the Iraqi higher judicial council, told the Associated Press that the charge of assaulting a foreign leader would stand. He declined to say what penalty Zaidi could face if convicted, saying: “It’s up to the court.” The defence has said the assault charge carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. Continue reading Iraqi who threw shoes at Bush to stand trial Leave a comment | Print This |
A US military lawyer is travelling to Britain to urge the Foreign Office to press harder for the release of a UK resident detained at Guantanamo Bay. Lt Col Yvonne Bradley told the BBC that her client Binyam Mohamed is very ill as a result of a hunger strike. Charges against him were dropped last year. He has alleged torture, and the UK government has been criticised after the full details were kept secret. “Mr Mohamed needs to be released now and not later,” said Lt Col Bradley. When asked why he was still at the camp, despite charges being dropped and the UK government saying it was pressing for his release, she said: “That’s the million dollar question. He should not be there.” Ethiopian national Mr Mohamed, 30, is the last recognised British resident to be held in the US detention camp in Cuba.
He has maintained that the evidence against him was obtained through torture, which the US denies. Lt Col Bradley said there was continuing concern over claims that he was still being detained because he was at the centre of a British High Court case in which he is seeking to prove he was tortured. Speaking to BBC Radio 4′s Today programme before she boarded a flight to the UK, she said she believed there was still a need among US officials to “cover it up”. “My coming to the UK is to try to talk to as many officials as possible and make them aware that Mr Mohamed needs to be released now and not later, and not continue to allow the politics of this case to ruin him,” she said. Inside a Baghdad jailVideo auto-starts so please click below to view: Continue reading How the US took “American Democracy” to Iraq Joe Byrne The Obama administration has made the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison facility a high priority. One of Obama’s first executive orders, two days after inauguration, was that Guantanamo be closed within the year. Human rights activists are applauding the order, as well as his promise that all American-led torture will cease. With new leadership, many are optimistic that the methods American forces use to gather intelligence during conflict will be dramatically changed. But surprisingly, in Guantanamo’s last hour, conditions are deteriorating due to a massive hunger strike. Lt. Col. Yvonne-Bradley, a lawyer of detainee Binyam Mohamed, revealed to The Observers’ Mark Townsend and Paul Harris that 50 out of 260 prisoners within Guantanamo are on strike. 20 of those are unhealthy enough to be listed as “critical”. The Joint Task Force in charge of Guantanamo has not commented on the hunger strike. “Binyam has witnessed people being forcibly extracted from their cell. Swat teams in police gear come in and take the person out; if they resist, they are force-fed and then beaten. Binyam has seen this and has not witnessed this before. Guantanamo Bay is in the grip of a mass hunger strike and the numbers are growing; things are worsening,” Bradley said. Leave a comment | Print This | |
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