(Foto editada por Jared Rodríguez/Truthout)

Artículo publicado en Amauta con permiso del autor

Se pregunta un informe de Naciones Unidas sobre las detenciones secretas

Fuente: t r u t h o u t
Traducción: Sinfo Fernández, Rebelión

por Andy Worthington
28 de enero, 2010

Un nuevo e importante informe sobre las políticas de detenciones secretas en todo el mundo, realizado por cuatro expertos en derechos humanos independientes de Naciones Unidas, concluye que: “A escala global, las detenciones secretas en relación con las políticas de contraterrorismo siguen siendo un grave problema”, y “si se recurre a ellas de forma sistemática y extendida, las detenciones secretas pueden alcanzar el umbral del crimen contra la humanidad”. Read the full story

Source: GRITtv

January 27, 2010

When he took office, Barack Obama promised to close the prison at Guantanamo within the year. This week, the anniversary of that promise brought a fresh round of protests at the capitol rotunda, since Guantanamo is still open. To mark another year of its existence, we thought we’d share some voices from those who’ve been inside. Thanks to the ACLU for this video.

Fuente: IPS

por William Fisher

NUEVA YORK, 22 ene (IPS) – El gobierno estadounidense de Barack Obama oculta pruebas de que tres muertes de prisioneros en la base militar de su país en Guantánamo, Cuba, declaradas como suicidios pero que no fueron tales, según abogados, activistas de los derechos humanos y expertos en seguridad nacional.

La inquietud recrudeció al publicarse en la última edición de la revista estadounidense Harper’s el testimonio de un informante según el cual los tres prisioneros, Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi y Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, murieron por efecto de la tortura. Read the full story

Source: Harper’s Magazine

(Image: t r u t h o u t)

by Scott Horton
January 18, 2010

1. “Asymmetrical Warfare”

When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo Naval Base “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners there are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006. Read the full story

Detainees in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area in Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in 2002. (Salon composite/Reuters photo)

Source: Glenn Greenwald

by Glenn Greenwald
December 3, 2009

Ronald Reagan, May 20, 1988, transmitting the Convention Against Torture to the Senate for ratification:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. . . . Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called “universal jurisdiction.” Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution. Read the full story

by Glenn Greenwald
October 18, 2009

David Rohde interviewed villagers in southern Afghanistan, above, in the late summer of 2007, about a year before he was kidnapped while working on a book about the region. (Tomas Munita for The New York Times)

The New York Times‘ David Rohde writes about the seven months he was held hostage by a group of extremist Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan and conveys this observation about what motivates them:

My captors harbored many delusions about Westerners. But I also saw how some of the consequences of Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban. Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes, as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being charged. Read the full story

by Andy Worthington
September 30, 2009

In four years of researching and writing about Guantánamo, I have become used to uncovering shocking information, but for sheer cynicism, I am struggling to think of anything that compares to the revelations contained in the unclassified ruling in the habeas corpus petition of Fouad al-Rabiah, a Kuwaiti prisoner whose release was ordered last week by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (PDF). In the ruling, to put it bluntly, it was revealed that the US government tortured an innocent man to extract false confessions and then threatened him until he obligingly repeated those lies as though they were the truth. Read the full story

by Andy Worthington
September 15, 2009

On Monday, one day after the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that the Obama administration was planning to introduce tribunals for the prisoners held in the US prison at Bagram airbase, Afghanistan, the reason for the specifically-timed leaks that led to the publication of the stories became clear.

The government was hoping that offering tribunals to evaluate the prisoners’ status would perform a useful PR function, making the administration appear to be granting important rights to the 600 or so prisoners held in Bagram, and distracting attention from the real reason for its purported generosity: a 76-page brief to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (PDF), submitted yesterday, in which the government attempted to claim that “Habeas rights under the United States Constitution do not extend to enemy aliens detained in the active war zone at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.” Read the full story

Shaker Aamer, who has spent seven years in Guantanamo Bay, claims he was beaten in custody in the presence of British intelligence officials

Shaker Aamer has never been charged with a crime, or given a date for trial. But still he languishes in Guantánamo

by Moazzam Begg
September 4, 2009

Imagine, gathered under one roof, over a dozen men who were once regarded as the most dangerous people on the planet – and a man who once guarded them, breaking their Ramadan fast together with lords and baronesses, poets and writers, activists and lawyers and students and children on a summer’s eve in London’s Kensington area – in its town hall to be exact. This is precisely what happened at the “Beyond Guantánamo” fundraising event hosted by Cageprisoners last Sunday.

Among the five hundred or more attendees were the wife and children of Shaker Aamer, a man held captive without charge in Guantánamo for eight years. Shaker’s wife gave me a copy of the latest letter she received from her husband – over a year ago – part of which I read to the audience: Read the full story

Six Bosnian men, called the "Algerian Six" were detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base for seven years. (Photo: Department of Defense)

by Seema Jilani
September 9, 2009

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Seven months after his release from Guantanamo Bay, Mustafa Ait Idr cautiously sips coffee in a Sarajevo cafe. His face is still partially paralyzed and numb from when guards pinned him onto gravel and jumped on him. He is nursing a broken finger — punishment for refusing to strip naked in his cell. On another occasion, his head was held in a toilet for prolonged periods of time.

Now a free man, Ait Idr proudly displays his Bosnian ID Card, which was only recently reinstated. He is still unable to find employment or access his bank accounts, which were frozen shortly after his arrest in 2001. He has seen his wife twice in the past seven years; upon his release, he met his youngest son for the first time.

Ait Idr is one of “The Algerian Six,” a group of Bosnian citizens detained at Guantanamo Bay for seven years, and recently released with all charges dropped. Their story is another in a long list of stories from Guantanamo of wrongful imprisonment on unproven charges. Read the full story