Denounce Torture

By Mary Shaw

In my work with Amnesty International, I have met some of the lawyers who represent detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and I've heard some compelling evidence that we are unfairly holding innocent people there. The detainees are often kept from seeing their lawyers, they have no access to the so-called evidence against them, and their hearings are held in secret.

Those things alone constitute a travesty of justice. But, according to a military lawyer who recently broke ranks to speak out on what's happening there, it turns out to be even worse than I thought.

According to an article that appeared over the weekend in the British newspaper The Independent, the military tribunal system at Guantanamo is so corrupt that "in the rare circumstances in which it was decided that the detainees were no longer enemy combatants, senior commanders ordered another panel to reverse the decision."

So you just can't win. They'll keep trying you until you're declared guilty, no matter how innocent you are.

The whole mess is headed to the Supreme Court for a December 5 showdown.

Meantime, hundreds of prisoners remain in legal limbo, feeling hopeless, helpless, and desperate.

God bless America.

>> Read the article from The Independent.

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Authors Website: http://www.maryshawonline.com

Authors Bio: Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views on politics, human rights, and social justice issues have appeared in numerous online forums and in newspapers and magazines worldwide. Note that the ideas expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty International or any other organization with which she may be associated. E-mail: mary@maryshawonline.com

By JUSTIN S. BECKER and ELISE LIU (Original Article)

In case you didn't notice on Facebook, September 17th was the Constitution's 220th birthday. Two days later, Senate Republicans narrowly blocked a vote on the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act, thoughtfully giving history teachers everywhere the chance to offer a more modern, nuanced definition of the Bill of Rights: a list of the liberties the government can never violate, unless, of course, Congress says that it can.

On that symbolic occasion, the Senate chose to retain a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) that prevents Guantanamo Bay inmates from challenging their detention in court. This de facto suspension of habeas corpus applies to foreign aliens as well as U.S. permanent residents, to those who have committed hostile acts as well as many who have not. Most frighteningly, it applies to detainees against whom military prosecutors lack enough evidence to classify as enemy combatants-but who may nonetheless be kept in Guantanamo limbo indefinitely.

Those who supported the MCA made the mistake of viewing habeas corpus as nothing more than a limit on government power, ignoring how intimately tied it is to the respect for human dignity. To lock someone in a cell as a criminal without giving him a chance to confront his accusers, to see the evidence presented against him, and to plead his case is an indefensible act of cruelty. Most of us would not (and do not) tolerate that treatment even for alleged rapists and murderers.

So why treat these prisoners any differently? Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, speaks to all our fears when he calls them "some of the most brutal, vicious people in the world." But that accusation is as inaccurate as it is manipulative: A study at Seton Hall University found that only eight percent of the Guantanamo detainees were Al Qaeda fighters, and only 30 percent were determined to be Al Qaeda members-and that's using a definition of membership that is broad enough to include anyone who ever talked to someone from Al Qaeda. The same study also found that the majority of detainees were, at most, found to be "associated with" organizations that themselves have only speculative ties to Al Qaeda. So desperate for evidence, the Government has resorted to identifying enemy combatants based, in part, on their wardrobe-the wearing of Casio watches and "olive drab clothing" has been "cited as proof that the detainees were enemy combatants."

Furthermore, over 86 percent of the detainees at Guantanamo were taken by Northern Alliance and Pakistani forces at a time when the U.S. military was paying large rewards for the capture of suspected enemies. Unless we want foreign bounty hunters to serve as prosecutor, judge, and jury, legitimate judicial oversight is needed.

And let no one deceive you: Military panels are no substitute for habeas corpus hearings. Officials are pressured to rubber-stamp previously made judgments and accept "garbage" evidence, explains Lt. Col. Stephen E. Abraham, a military attorney who helped run the tribunals. "Nobody stood up and said the emperor's wearing no clothes," he writes in an affidavit. "The prevailing attitude was, ‘If they're in Guantanamo, they're there for a reason.'"

Why does the Bush Administration work so hard to deny these detainees justice? Perhaps because habeas corpus proceedings could shatter the smokescreen they have built around the use of torture in CIA prisons. A Justice Department memo released last November spelled this out clearly: Terrorism suspects would be denied the right to meet with an attorney for fear that they might describe the methods of interrogation that had been used against them. How clever of our leaders, killing two birds with one stone: using an abrogation of one right to conceal the violation of another.

Our government assures its critics that habeas corpus remains intact for U.S. citizens; the restriction applies only to aliens and U.S. permanent residents. But not only is this an arbitrary and unjust distinction, it offers little real comfort: Detaining a U.S. citizen without the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus may be illegal, but the only way to challenge an illegal detention-to assert that one is a citizen and deserves basic legal rights-is through a habeas corpus petition. The idea, then, that we are immune from government incursions on our legal rights is a frightening Catch-22, one that leaves us entirely dependent on the propriety of military investigators.

In any case, indefinitely holding an individual-citizen or not-in a jail cell away from his family, without even the hope of legal recourse, is no more justifiable simply because he lacks a U.S. passport. Ultimately, the right of habeas corpus should be inviolable for the same reason torture is unthinkable-because we pride ourselves on living in a society that treats all people humanely, even when it might be expedient to do otherwise.


Justin S. Becker '09 is a molecular and cellular biology concentrator in Winthrop House. Elise Liu '11 is a Crimson editorial comper in Canaday. Both are members of the Harvard College Democrats.

(Original Article)
 
SOUTH ROYALTON - A military defense lawyer on Wednesday called the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay corrupt, like a show trial that lacked structural integrity.

"The defendant wasn't needed. Law wasn't really needed," U.S. Army Maj. Thomas Fleener told students at the Vermont Law School.

Fleener, an Army reserve officer who once represented a detainee at the Cuba military prison, said a fundamental flaw there was the tendency to combine detention, interrogation and trial into one.

"I think really what needs to happen, we should have done it a long time ago, is to have people step back from Guantanamo Bay as an interrogation, detention and trial center and look at it in different terms," he said.

What needs to be separated is the government's obligation to put people on trial and hold them culpable for certain acts and its responsibility to gather information to protect Americans, he said.

"And I think what the administration has been able to do, quite successfully, is take the fact that we want to protect Americans and gather information to continue to protect Americans and keep people from harming us and hold those people responsible for 9/11 and just sort of roll it all together," he said.

Fleener represented Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al-Bahlul, a Yemeni, accused of being Osama bin Laden's bodyguard in Afghanistan at the time of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States. But Bahlul wants to represent himself, has refused to cooperate with Fleener and told the court he is boycotting the proceeding.

Fleener, a federal public defender in civilian life, said the military commissions lacked rules about evidence, and allowed evidence derived from torture before a certain date.

"They (the administration and legislators) try to immunize the interrogator by creating a law which says what they did at that particular time wasn't wrong," he said of the Military Commissions Act.
 

The Amnesty International student group at the University of Redlands, in California, held a habeas corpus funeral on October 17th. We had a pretty good turnout, with a lot of students at least stopping by to learn about why we were holding the event. We thought we would send you some pictures of the event.

We also had a mock obituary in the school paper, as well as a full length article on habeas corpus and the Military Commissions Act.

We're looking forward to working with local groups in our town to host the Ghost of Abu Ghraib house party next month.

Kristin Smith '10
President, Amnesty International-UoR

Rice Says US Mishandled Case of Canadian Man Seized by US Officials

Staff AP News

Oct 24, 2007 14:32 EDT

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged on Wednesday that the United States mishandled the case of a Canadian engineer seized by U.S. officials and taken to Syria, where he and the Canadian government say he was tortured.

Rice, speaking at a U.S. congressional hearing, said the United States has told Canada "that we will try to do better in the future."

"We do not think that this case was handled as it should have been. We do absolutely not wish to transfer anyone to any place in which they might be tortured," she said.

When asked whether the United States relied on diplomatic assurances from Syria that the engineer, Maher Arar, would not be tortured, Rice said she would respond later because her memory of certain details "has faded a bit."

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, was detained by U.S. immigration agents on Sept. 26, 2002, as he stopped in New York en route home from a vacation. Days later, he was sent by private jet to Syria where, according to Canadian officials, he was tortured.

After nearly a year in a Syrian prison, he was released without charges and returned to Canada.

The Canadian government has apologized to Arar and agreed to pay him almost $10 million in compensation.

The Bush administration has not apologized. Arar's name remains on watch lists that forbid his entry into the United States.

Source: AP News

Your thoughts on this quote? 

[T]he great privilege of habeas corpus, and of trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the English people for ordinary individuals against the State . . . -The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers-is, in the highest degree, odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments . . . Extraordinary powers assumed by the Executive with the consent of Parliament in emergencies should be yielded up, when and as, the emergency declines . . . This is really the test of civilisation.

-Winston S. Churchill, Cable to Home Secretary Herbert Morrison from Cairo (Churchill responds to critics over the decision to release accused Nazi collaborator Oswald Moseley), Nov. 21, 1943. Reproduced in The Second World War: Closing the Ring (1952)

The long awaited movie "Rendition" came out this weekend, and has provoked many movie critics and people from all sides of the political spectrum.  There were 3 advanced screenings in Washington, DC, one on Capitol Hill for Congress, and the others went beyond capacity.  When watching the movie, I was completely moved.  I felt it was a powerful message, and I heard the people in the audience gasp at the torture scenes, and really thought that this movie could move plenty of people to realize the truth about what the administration is doing and the truth about the lives of many detainees who have to go through the horrors of torture everyday, many of whom have not been given the right to challenge their detention or to prove their innocence.  After the movie I was pensive, and I realized how important the work at the Denounce Torture Initiative really was, and I was proud to be a part of it. 

But when I went home to read the reviews I was very disappointed.  Not just those from professional critics, but those from ordinary people who went to see it.  While many were positive and open-minded, there also many negative reviews, people who claimed this as just "leftist liberal garbage".  I couldn't understand the sentiments of these commentators.  They were upset because the movie portrayed America in a "bad light", and that the real terrorist was portrayed as "good".  It's true, the movie gave the real terrorist of the movie depth and human emotions, but the reality is that is what all people are: human.  The process of dehumanizing the other is what causes war, and what allows for human rights abuses to continue.  And I think the movie was really trying to show that there is no stricly black and white on the issue.  Some people say that wanting to stop renditions, torture, and indefinite detentions and hold the United States responsible for its actions is a leftist initiative.  While it's true that my political stance can be considered "liberal", I feel that the message of this movement, and of the movie is less about politics but more about humanity.

What could be considered even worse than the people who didn't like the movie because of the political message, were the people who didn't like the movie because they thought there would be more action.  These are the apathetic, going on in their ordinary lives without much thought to what happens to others, and only think about their own pleasure.  Entertainment now in days is one the only ways to get people to sympathize with the fate of others, by having them live vicariously and for that 1 or 2 hours feel what is happening to the characters.  A good movie is able to open the mind of the viewer to other possibilities, to provide a glimpse into a world beyond our own, and this is what Rendition does.

There are other anti-Guantánamo groups in all those social sites, some of them linked to AI's sections, structures, members or supporters. This is great! Our role would be to serve as a link to connect your sites and gather supporter together. It's about joining efforts to mobilize many people against illegal detention.

We encourage you to join our groups and promote them among your friends, AI members and supporters. The more friends we have, the noisier we will be in denouncing injustice.

Our profiles*:

Like many of you, we are now in MySpace [http://www.myspace.com/amnestysupporter], Facebook [http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5887714051] and Bebo [http://www.bebo.com/AmnestyS]. You will need to create an account if you don't have one already.

Recruit followers for our Close Guantánamo group in Twitter [http://twitter.com/closeguantanamo] and help promoting the campaign via mobile phone. It's free.

And we are also in Youtube! [http://www.youtube.com/closeguantanamo] Send us your videos and we will post them in our Youtube profile.

Other sites we are using are: Zaad [link: http://pods.zaadz.com/guantanamo] and Taking IT global [link: http://projects.takingitglobal.org/guantanamo].

*you may need to create your own profile (if you don't have one) to view the pages below 

Original post here. By Andy Worthington:

Speaking to journalists last week, Navy Capt. Theodore Fessel Jr., the chief representative at Guantánamo for the Pentagon's Office of Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants (OARDEC), which oversees the tribunals and review boards convened to assess the detainees' status, hinted that the authorities had "begun seeking new or previously overlooked evidence that may warrant new hearings after the process came under fire," as the Associated Press described it.

Capt. Fessel, who ignored long-standing complaints that the tribunals and review boards are worthless because they rely on secret evidence, possibly obtained through torture, and because the detainees are not allowed representation by lawyers, was referring in particular to recent claims made by former insiders that the tribunals, mostly held in 2004-05, relied on weak and often "generic" evidence and were designed to rubber-stamp the detainees' prior designation as "enemy combatants."

"With all the outside eyes looking in at the process," Fessel explained, "it's forcing us to say, 'OK, did we take everything into consideration when we did the Combatant Status Review Tribunals?'" Stating that, by reviewing cases, the military was "recognizing that some detainees may no longer pose a threat" - and blithely ignoring the fact that 56 percent of the detainees have already been released for just such reasons - Fessel attempted to justify his comments by citing the hypothetical example of "a detainee who belonged to a Taliban faction that has stopped fighting," who "may no longer be a security risk," and summed up the administration's position as follows: "It's an acknowledgment that if there is new evidence or a new thing to take into bearing, in the spirit of being an open and fair process, we have to take that into consideration."

Kessel's comments provoked outrage from Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, the first insider to speak out in June. In an email to the Associated Press, he wrote, "Ultimately, conducting new CSRTs - even discussing the possibility - repudiates every prior assertion that the original CSRTs were valid acts. They are, in essence, both a hypocritical act as well as an act of moral cowardice."

Picking up on what astute readers will also have noticed in Kessel's reference to "the spirit" of "an open and fair process" - namely, an unconscious acknowledgment that the process was not actually either "open" or "fair" -Abraham added, "The CSRTs were NOT fair. They were specifically designed to reach a result and, in the few instances where a contrary result was reached, pressure was exerted to change the decision, a new tribunal was selected," or the decision was disregarded.

Since filing his affidavit in June, Lt. Col. Abraham has been feted by lawyers who have suggested that his damning analysis of the tribunals helped persuade the Supreme Court - in a move that was so rare that it last took place 60 years ago - to reverse a decision made in April, and to agree to hear the detainees' cases over the coming months, Lawyers hope that the Supreme Court will decide, once and for all, that the detainees have the right to challenge the basis of their detention, and that crucial passages in last fall's shameful Military Commissions Act, which stripped them of their habeas corpus rights, will be struck down.

Noticeably, however, Lt. Col. Abraham's condemnation of the tribunal process was not acclaimed universally, and the Department of Justice in particular attempted to smear his account as "innuendo." In an email exchange with me last week, Lt. Col. Abraham explained that the recent criticism of the tribunal process by an Army Major who took part in nearly 10% of the tribunals - which has provoked this latest admission of backsliding by Capt. Fessel - was personally satisfying. "Part of me feels vindicated by the revelations," he wrote. "Of course, it can hardly be said now that I didn't know what I was talking about."

He then added a poignant footnote, which balanced his criticism of the administration with a regard for the extra-legal plight of the detainees: "But I am saddened by the fact that more detainees, about whom there is no evidence of involvement in terrorism, will likely die before something is done."

Planning new tribunals, as Capt. Fessel has suggested, would not only reveal the original process as a sham; it would also prolong an already intolerable situation, in which, as Lt. Col. Abraham correctly points out, men against whom no evidence of terrorist activity exists will lose more years of their lives - and may even die in Guantánamo - without ever having had the opportunity to challenge the basis of their detention in a manner that is either meaningful or legally acceptable. They should be resisted as yet another example of an administration that, having rashly jettisoned the existing legal system six years ago, remains fixated on patching up its brutal replacement, conceived in haste and fueled by arrogance and vengeance, which has been repeatedly revealed as unjust, immoral and inadequate.

Several University of Wisconsin activists protested a military act Wednesday that allows the U.S. executive branch to imprison "unlawful enemy combatants" without a court hearing.

The Military Commissions Act signed in 2006 denies any individuals designated "unlawful enemy combatants" habeas corpus rights - which place the burden of proof on those detaining a person to justify the detention - and access to evidence held against them. The president of the United States can then determine which methods of torture are humane, and allow the use of evidence obtained through torture.

Wednesday's protest was scheduled on the same date the act was passed one year ago.

Members of UW's Amnesty International branch, a group that promotes human rights, gave speeches, signed petitions and visually demonstrated their opposition to the MCA in Library Mall. The group was joined by other UW student organizations like In Your Hands and the Muslim Students Association.

"[President Bush] could designate any of us as enemy combatants - all he has to do is say the word and we're in jail," said Matthew Rothschild, Progressive Magazine editor. "We could be in jail for the rest of our lives and would never see a court or talk to a lawyer."

More from this article from the Badger Herald here.

Civil rights groups kick off 86 days of protest

The Muslim Students Association and In Your Hands kicked off "‘86' Gitmo-Shut It Down" Wednesday at Library Mall with the protest of the one-year anniversary of the Military Commissions Act.

Oct. 17, 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, a piece of legislation that "strips habeas corpus rights from all detainees at Guantanamo Bay," according to a primary contact for the Amnesty International group Samuel Philipsek.

MSA and IYH will hold demonstrations for 86 days, ending Jan. 11, 2008, protesting the president's abuse of Guantanamo Bay detainees' civil liberties. Jan. 11, 2008 marks the one-year anniversary of the first person detained at Guantanamo.

More from this article from The Daily Cardinal here.

One year ago today, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act. With it, founding principles of the U.S. Constitution were discarded in the name of fighting terror. The Act made it lawful to hold prisoners indefinitely without charge or trial, to assume guilt before innocence, to blur the definition of torture, and to use information obtained through brutal treatment as "evidence." Other governments, including the British during America's founding, have tried to exert control in similar ways. It didn't work then and it doesn't work now.

Is America safer when we undo the Constitution? Those with first-hand experience of torture, such as Senator John McCain, believe it is not only wrong but counter-productive. This and other abuses erode America's moral standing in the world. Strong evidence suggests that they even serve as a recruiting tool for those using terror and provide convenient cover for anyone else abusing human rights.

Making the world a safer place requires consistent and universal respect for human rights. Join Amnesty International in insisting that Congress return America to its core constitutional principles of justice by overturning the Military Commissions Act, granting fair and timely trials, treating detainees humanely and reinstating habeas corpus - the right to challenge one's detention in court.

Strengthen America's commitment to human rights and the rule of law. It's up to people like us to demand it. Take action at http://www.amnestyusa.org

"Camp Justice" is what our Government is calling the new tent city being built for the GITMO trails.

The past five years have seen the USA engage in systematic violations of international law, with a distressing impact on thousands of detainees and their families. Human rights violations have included:

Secret detention
Enforced disappearance
Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
Outrages upon personal dignity, including humiliating treatment
Denial and restriction of habeas corpus
Indefinite detention without charge or trial
Prolonged incommunicado detention
Arbitrary detention
Unfair trial procedures

Now... we seek "justice"?

What version of "justice"?

Article published Oct 15, 2007 in the Washington Times

By Nat Hentoff - In what used to be called "the greatest deliberative body in the world, Sens. Patrick Leahy, Vermont Democrat, and Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, tried last month to get a vote on their Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007. But their bill could not get the four votes needed to reach the supermajority total for the debate to go on. Only six Republicans wanted to keep on deliberating.

Among the opponents of the bill was The Washington Times (a paper in which this column appears). The Oct. 1 editorial "A terrorist bill of rights?" lauded "the cohesive structure already in place (at Guantanamo Bay)." The editorial did not mention that those prisoners, many held for five years, are not allowed nonmilitary lawyers when they appear before military commissions. Nor can they see core evidence against them that can be obtained from sources through "coercive interrogation," verging on torture.

During his Sept. 7 Senate floor speech introducing his failed habeas bill, Mr. Leahy included previous testimony by Rear Adm. Donald Guter, who, Mr. Leahy noted, "was working in his office in the Pentagon as judge advocate general of the Navy on Sept. 11, 2001, and saw firsthand the effects of terrorism."

Mr. Guter later testified that, "As we limit the rights of human beings, even those of the enemy, we become more like the enemy." But a strong opponent of habeas rights for the detainees, Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, a contender for the presidency, scorns the notion that those prisoners are being abused: "Those guys get taxpayer-paid-for prayer rugs, have prayer five times a day (and) they've all gained weight." Mr. Hunter, whose forthrightness I've admired on other occasions, said nothing of the repeated hunger strikes, between prayers on taxpayer-paid-for rugs, and attempted suicides, some of them successful. Nor did he comment on a Sept. 7 letter in the internationally respected British medical journal, "The Lancet." The 260 signers, nearly all of them doctors from 16 countries, charged, as reported by the Associated Press, that "The U.S. medical establishment appears to have turned a blind eye to the abuse of military medicine at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba." And the letter compared the ongoing roles of U.S. doctors working at Guantanamo, who have been accused of ignoring torture, to the South African doctors in the case of (celebrated) anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who died while being detained by the security police.

Providing documented information on the practices of some military doctors at Guantanamo, Dr. Steven H. Miles, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School and a member of its Center for Bioethics, has written last year's "Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror" (Random House, 2006).

Among the authors of the "Lancet" letter is Dr. William Hopkins, a psychiatrist with the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in London. In a letter that appeared last year in the "Lancet," he and the other authors of this year's letter characterized the aggressive force-feeding of Guantanamo inmates on hunger strikes as "degrading and unethical." Mr. Hunter did not mention these hunger strikes, which are still going on. Nor have I heard anything about them from Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, a chief architect of and cheerleader for congressional legislation (as in the Military Commissions Act of 2006) denying habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

And a leading presidential contender, Republican Rudolph Giuliani, utterly opposing habeas rights there, said during a presidential debate that it would amount to the "release of criminals into the street." He appears unaware of studies I and others have reported that are based on the Defense Department's own records revealing that a substantial majority of those prisoners had no connection to al Qaeda. Many also had no links to terrorism, and were rounded up by Afghanistan warlords and sold to us for a bounty.

I was impressed, when, after succeeding Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, Robert Gates said publicly that he would like Guantanamo Bay to be closed because of the strong international criticisms of the so-called trials there that greatly damaged the credibility of our government's guarantees of their fairness. But there has been no further word from Mr. Gates.

In a Sept. 24 lead editorial, the Des Moines Register emphasized that enactment of the Leahy-Specter restoration of habeas would neither flood the courts nor turn loose terrorists: "[This is] an issue... of fundamental human liberty (the centuries-old core of habeas corpus) in a nation supposedly committed to justice for all." As our president said on Sept. 12, 2001, "We will not allow this enemy to win the war by changing our way of life." Yet this denial of habeas, a vital part of our way of life, is seldom even raised by most of the crowd of presidential candidates from both parties. I hear no national concern for the hunger strikers and suicides at Guantanamo, who actually are human beings awaiting justice.

By LAURENCE H. EBERSOLE
Originally published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Imagine no more tortures. Wednesday will be one year since the Military Commissions Act. Wednesday will be the start of 86 days of action to repeal the worst features of this act; then to close Guantanamo prison, halt torture, restore the use of habeas and end extraordinary renditions -- the extra-judicial kidnapping of suspects to third nations that torture. Consider recent history.

The United States is a signatory to the Convention Against Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention against Torture). This agreement defines torture as severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, intentionally inflicted on a person for obtaining a confession, obtaining information, intimidating a third party (these acts of cruelty are inflicted by an agent of the state or other person acting in an official capacity).

The late El Salvadoran Jesuit and social psychologist, Ignacio Martin-Baro, asserted that torture can be understood as domination; directed at an entire community, a tactic to oppress humane social projects and ideals. Although individual suspects at Guantanamo seem remote from our daily life, the ramifications of detainee mistreatment are known around the world.

Conditions at Guantanamo include sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and confinement to mesh cages. Several detainees have taken their own lives; numerous others have been on hunger strikes. The individuals at Guantanamo have not been allowed the customary right of habeas -- to know the reason for their detention and nature of charges, and if there is valid evidence against them.

Consider this insight from the poem "Humiliated in the Shackles," by Sudanese journalist (now Guantanamo poet) Sami al Haj: "They have monuments to liberty/And freedom of opinion, which is well and good./But I explained to them that Architecture/is not justice." Will the U.S. standard for justice be equated with the architecture of anguish; the anguish of how many Guantanamos any individual must endure. Let us find alternatives.

The United Nations review team for the Convention against Torture criticized the U.S. in 2006 for the practice of these arbitrary detentions at Guantanamo, "disappearance" of suspects, secret detentions and indefinite detention without charge; all of which violate the Convention against Torture. This detention includes the 70,000 people under U.S. control in Iraq, Afghanistan, Diego Garcia, secret detention centers and at Guantanamo. The review team reminded the U.S. that the Convention against Torture applies in peace and in war, and applies to all branches of the U.S. -- both military and CIA. The review team for the Convention against Torture calls for the closure of Guantanamo detention facility -- without opening a proxy Guantanamo.

According to Amnesty International, the CIA uses private aircraft operators and front companies to preserve the secrecy of illegal rendition flights and "black site" detention centers. Amnesty believes that the U.S. government has rendered, in this manner, hundreds of individuals -- for the purpose of interrogation and detention to countries with dubious human rights records. These countries include Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Morocco.

Legislation in the Congress can help to end all those harmful practices. Amnesty International USA has already been lobbying Congress in support of Sen. Tom Harkin's Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility Closure Act of 2007. It would help close the U.S. facility, contribute to ending indefinite detentions; prevent the U.S. from returning prisoners to countries where suspects may be tortured. Amnesty believes that every person detained as a terror suspect has the right to trial in federal court or by court martial, instead of military commissions, which fail to meet international fair trial standards.

Early in November, Amnesty USA will host opportunities to view human rights films and to write letters to the concerned families of the Guantanamo suspects. These families do not know where their husbands, brothers (even youths) are being detained or if they are still alive.

The 86 days of action will culminate with a series of vigils across the nation on Jan. 11 to help close the Guantanamo facility. Imagine the impossible. Now take part.

By Chris Hedges

The Bush administration has called for the respect of human rights in Burma, a pretty safe piece of posturing, but it remains silent as Egypt’s dictator, Gen. Hosni Mubarak , unleashes the largest crackdown on public opposition in over a decade.  Our moral indignation over the shooting of monks masks the incestuous and growing alliance we have built in the so-called war on terror with some of the world’s most venal dictatorships.

Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 26 years and is grooming his son, Gamal, to succeed him, can torture and “disappear” dissidents—such as the Egyptian journalist Reda Hilal, who vanished four years ago—without American censure because he does the dirty work for us on those we “disappear.” The extraordinary-rendition program, which sees the United States kidnap and detain terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world, fits neatly with the Egyptian regime’s contempt for due process.  Those rounded up by American or Egyptian security agents are never granted legal rights.  The abductors are often hooded or masked.  If the captors are American the suspects are spirited onto a Gulfstream V jet registered to a series of dummy American corporations, such as Bayard Foreign Marketing of Portland, Ore., and whisked to Egypt or perhaps