The Prison Off The Coast
Fighting goes on in Libya.
Meanwhile the Washington Post publishes an extensive report today about a torture prison on an island off the coast. Prisoners there are held, partly now for over ten years, without a trial.
Two years ago the head of the state announced the closing of the prison and promised the prisoners, which he called 'terrorists', to allow for a fair trial in front of a regular court.
But that announcement turns out to have been, like many others he made, just an empty promise. The prison continues to exist and the prisoners will be put in front of secretive military tribunals.
The ruler deplores this but claims that the parliament is responsible as it refused to support his policy.
Obama gave notice that he will secure 'humanitarian treatment' for the prisoners.
Posted by b on April 24, 2011 at 14:06 UTC | Permalink
Eureka, that is a great idea. There can be no moving forward without the rendering of Justice.
Posted by: Morocco Bama | Apr 24 2011 18:03 utc | 2
Then there will be no moving forward. Justice only happens for those who can afford it in today's America. Mr. Ryan, and the rest of Ayn Rand's minions, have big plans for us peons. Up with selfishness and greed, down with truth and justice. And most of the sheep in America are oblivious. After all, what could be more important than voting on American Idol, or Dancing with the Stars?
Welcome to the "Global Plantation" (MB's phrase) America.
Posted by: ben | Apr 24 2011 18:33 utc | 3
You're right, ben, Justice will not be rendered through conventional legal channels, but Eureka's idea is an effective People's Court, where the rule of Justice is administered, not the rule of Law.....which we all know, in its current state, was written for the Plutocrats to escape Justice, and for The Masses to never receive Justice.
Posted by: Morocco Bama | Apr 24 2011 19:10 utc | 4
"In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?" — Saint Augustine
Posted by: Pyrrho | Apr 25 2011 1:02 utc | 5
What is interesting about this story is that, if true, it reveals the total political illiteracy of Obama's crew.
Clearly, in order to win popular and Congressional support for closing Guantanamo down, there had to be a campaign againast those who set Guantanamo up. Had Bush and Cheney, and their minions, in the legal and intelligence communities, been harassed by prosecuting them for their criminality (of which there was abundant evidence) their ability to continue to maintain the fictions on which Guantanamo was based would have been considerably abridged.
They would have had to devote their energies to defending themselves.
They are after all, unindicted, suspects in a whole range of major felonies. The ICC has never prosecuted a war criminal with as many charges to answer as Bush, Cheney or their subordinates would have to face. No Liberian, Croat, Hutu or Serb has come close to amassing an indictment of the size or severity that could be lodged (using nothing more than the public record) against the founders of Guantanamo, the torturers of Bagram, the kidnappers and the assassins of thousands and the destroyers of Fallujah.
Had Obama being acting in a rational fashion, as a politician, he had the luxury, employing nothing more than blindfolded justice and statute law, to sit back and watch as virtually the entire high command of the Republican party was charged and tried, on very serious offences, about which nobody could complain that they were politically motivated persecution.
Given that his first act in office was to announce that the law would be retroactively suspended so far as his predecessors were concerned. That every crime would be forgotten, whitewashed and, supposing that any still remained, forgiven; the fact that he has been unable to shake off the fruits of those forgiven crimes is not surprising.
Of course what this takes us back to is the "Who is Barack Obama?" question. To which my answer is that he is the son of a woman who worked for the US government in Indonesia, in the early years of Suharto; the step-son of one of Suharto's officers and a minor kleptocrat in a genocidal regime, whose victims must number inn thev millions. The son of a cadet of the Empire selected for a US scholarship and an economist in the administration of one of the most craven allies of the 'west' in Africa. The grandson of an official in a bank which dealt with Marcos for the US government. A community organiser in the tradition of Saul Alinsky. A pol in the Daley machine. A protege of Joe Lieberman. ...
Posted by: bevin | Apr 25 2011 1:40 utc | 6
Today the Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde, Spiegel and others (and the NYT according to the Guardian) published extensive leaked documents about that little prison. It is another part of the Wikileaks stash.
Striking, to me, is the complete incompetence of the whole system, and how the US digs itself deeper and deeper in to a hole (regarding int. law).
Amusing also: Guardian doesn't mention Wikileaks once, nor does it mentions its other partners (except the nyt) in this release.
Posted by: philippe | Apr 25 2011 9:48 utc | 7
one week ago, we read this:
http://www.infowars.com/bombshell-barack-obama-conclusively-outed-as-cia-creation/
Not only Obama, His father, Mother and all family worked for CIA.
All is clear today
Posted by: an idiot | Apr 25 2011 10:27 utc | 8
The Guantanamo files are here: http://wikileaks.ch/gitmo/
A Guardian comment on the files:
But what is given new prominence by these latest Guantánamo files is the cold, incompetent stupidity of the system: a system that tangled up the old and the young, the sick and the innocent. A system in which to say you were not a terrorist might be taken as evidence of your cunning. A system designed less to hand out justice than to process and supply information from inmates, as if they were not humans but items of digital data in some demented storage machine programmed always to reject the answer "No, I was not involved". The clinical idiocy of this dreadful place is the most chilling thing of all, since it strips away even the cynical but persuasive defence: it was harsh but it worked and it kept the world safe.It didn't work, much of the time. These files show that some of the information collected was garbage and that many of those held knew nothing that could be of use to the people demanding answers from them. Far from securing the fight against terror, the people running the camp faced an absurdist battle to educate a 14-year-old peasant boy kidnapped by an Afghan tribe and treat the dementia, depression and osteoarthritis of an 89-year-old man caught up in a raid on his son's house.
...
Again and again, what stands out from these stories is not some as yet undiscovered horror from the secretive steel-barred and orange-suited compound, but the chaos, the confusion and the casualness of it all. The people who ran this place were not deceived. They too could see that this was not the distillation of evil that the American government claimed it to be, but a shambolic catch from a trawl whose nets had dragged in all sorts of people, many of them by mistake.
b @ 9:" catch from a trawl whose nets had dragged in all sorts of people, many of them by mistake."
That about says it all, mostly innocent nobodies, whose lives have turned into complete horror because the US empire needs something their nation has.
Posted by: ben | Apr 25 2011 13:50 utc | 10
Khadafi had prisons in Lybia that were set up for the explicit purpose of stopping immigration to the EU, that was part of the deal he made, with Italy, and thus by proxy with the EU.
Reportedly, the no. of prisoners was about 60K to a 100K, the bulk ‘black’ Africans, but not only. In Concentration camps.
It is rumored that the larger part of the refugees, to Lampedusa, and then to Italy, and now given temp. Schengen visas by Berlusconi are from these prisons.
(According to the press, about 20K ppl accorded visas, must be about right, but those are mostly Tunisians and Egyptians, afaik.)
Sark had a fit and closed the border in Ventigmiglia..
I have no idea if the story about prisons in Lybia is true, but the rumors are very long standing and persistent.
There were always some who escaped, (?) and in CH, anyway, as they were oppressed by Khadafi, they were given the benefit of the doubt, as the Swiss hate Kahdafi with a passion beyond reason. Here, we have at present, well I hate to give a number, but several hundred a day coming in, and many claim to be from Lybian 'pens', 'concentration' prisons.
Just throwing that out, sorry that I can't substantiate - just one of those things that is not reported in the press..
Posted by: Noirette | Apr 25 2011 18:38 utc | 12
Chris Floyd contrasts the NY Times and Guardian's reports on the Gitmo files
Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. | Apr 26 2011 0:29 utc | 13
Noirette,
I do not know the specifics of how Libya stopped refugees, but I know they did. And did so as a deal with the EU. Tunisia and Morocco are also confirmed to be part of the southern wall of Foretress Europe. Algeria can safely be assumed to be in to. As part of the deal Europe has delivered surveilliance equipment, the better to monitor the population.
For an American comparision it would be as if the US paid Mexican poilticians to enact and patrol the wall on their side of the border. Clever, is it not? Until the whole thing comes crashing down that is.
If you find any online intervieu with any of the refugees (bloggosphere/small media) I would find it very interesting.
Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Apr 27 2011 7:01 utc | 14
The Guantanamo situation is even worse than depicted above, as these old links show.
Posted by: Hannah K. O'Luthon | Apr 27 2011 10:37 utc | 15
@ a swedish kind of death at 24. I also heard that the 'black' or ' African' mercenaries Kadahfi hired came from these prisons and were not recruited abroad and did not travel into Lybia. If I see something of interest, I'll post it.
Posted by: Noirette | Apr 27 2011 14:33 utc | 16
The comments to this entry are closed.
It would be difficult to pen fiction which demonstrates so clearly an enemy within, dismantling even the illusion of a civilized justice system as this, a real bipartisan (Bush/Obama Gonzales/ Holder) story does.
Until US Americans walk like Egyptians, ridding ourselves of both major party's and all current leaders, things will only get much worse.
We the people need to turn every wal-mart building into white collar and war crime courthouses and prison cells.
Posted by: Eureka Springs | Apr 24 2011 15:10 utc | 1