Saturday 20th of April 2024
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from the moral high ground .....

on the moral high ground .....

An unprecedented high court ruling yesterday blamed the US, with British connivance, for keeping the "powerful evidence" secret, sparking criticism from lawyers, campaigners and MPs, who claimed the government had capitulated to American bullying.

Two senior judges said they were powerless to reveal the information about the torture of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident, because David Miliband, the foreign secretary, had warned the court the US was threatening to stop sharing intelligence about terrorism with the UK.

In a scathing judgment, the judges said the evidence, and what MI5 knew about it, must remain secret because according to Miliband, the American threats meant "the public of the United Kingdom would be put at risk".

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones made clear they were unhappy with their decision, but said they had no alternative as a result of Miliband's claim. Their ruling revealed that Miliband stuck to his position about the threat to the UK even after Barack Obama signed orders two weeks ago banning torture and announcing the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

http://www.truthout.org/020509C

outrage .....

Faced with impending defeat in a US District Court habeas corpus case, the Obama administration devised a new strategy for continuing the detention of Mohammed Jawad, an Afghani who may have been as young as 12 in 2002 when he allegedly wounded two US soldiers with a grenade.

Justice Department lawyers announced Friday that they would transform Jawad's indefinite detention as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo Bay into a criminal case, thus negating the habeas corpus hearing in Washington, DC, where Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle had accused the government of "dragging [the case] out for no good reason."

The Obama administration is trying its best to keep Jawad locked up at Guantanamo, despite the fact that he was only a child when he was detained in Afghanistan, as well as the fact that his "confession" - to throwing a grenade at U.S. troops - was tortured out of him.

Last week Judge Huvelle declared the case against him "an outrage," and urged lawyers for the Department of Justice to "let him out. Send him back to Afghanistan."

http://www.alternet.org/rights/141579/federal_judge_slams_u.s._govt_for_ongoing_detention_of_alleged_child_soldier_at_gitmo/?page=entire