rendition
Democracy Now! Thursday, December 22, 2011
NATO has admitted for the first time Libyan civilians were killed and injured during its seven-month bombing campaign that led to the ouster and death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The acknowledgement came after a New York Times investigation revealed at least 40 civilians, and perhaps more than 70, were killed by NATO airstrikes, including at least 29 women or children. Others were killed when NATO warplanes bombed ambulance crews and civilians who were attempting to aid the wounded injured in earlier strikes. We speak to New York Times senior reporter Eric Schmitt, who co-wrote the investigation with C.J. Chivers. The Pentagon has admitted significant responsibility for an attack on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border last month that left 24 Pakistani solders dead. New York Times reporter Eric Schmitt, who has just returned from Pakistan, says the report details just the latest in a string of incidents that could hurt Pakistani-U.S. ties. We speak with Mother Jones' national security reporter, Nick Baumann, who also details the cases of several U.S. citizens who have already been detained abroad by foreign security forces, interrogated, sometimes abused, and asked questions they believe could only have come from U.S. law enforcement. Democracy Now!, a daily independent newshour.
Email this pageGlobal Report: Sept. 15-21 2010: Torture Victims Cannot Sue CIA
Among this week's news: A federal court rules that former prisoners of the C.I.A. cannot sue over their alleged torture in overseas prisons; activists are arrested on the grounds of a new US nuclear weapons production facility; a thick layer of oil stretching for miles was discovered on the Gulf sea floor; and security in Afghanistan is deteriorating.
GRITtv: Vince Warren: Freedom, Privacy, and the Courts
“Do we want to live in a place where the U.S. government can torture and kill people at will? Or do we not?” asks Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. A new Amnesty International report says that thousands of detainees in Iraq, many recently transferred from U.S. custody, are still at risk of torture, and back in the U.S. the Obama administration continues to use "national security" as justification for everything from dismissing lawsuits to searching laptops. Vince joins Laura in studio to discuss all this and more, and he points out that he is free to discuss all these issues publicly on GRITtv, while the only place the accusations cannot be discussed is in a court of law.
Global Report: Aug. 25-31 2010: US Military to Remain in Afghanistan for Years
Among this week's news: US air base plans reveal the US military intends to stay in Afghanistan for years; in Iraq, despite official statements to the contrary, American troops remain and sometimes die in combat; the FBI and CIA are sued over an American's torture; and a top former FBI interrogator says the fight against an Islamic center being built a few blocks away from Ground Zero is helping al Qaida. These stories and more.
"Democracy Now!": Tues. June 15 2010
In a major setback for holding US officials accountable for rendition and torture, the Supreme Court has rejected Arar’s lawsuit against the US government. Arar was seized at New York’s Kennedy Airport in 2002 on a stopover from a vacation abroad. Instead of allowing him to return home to Canada, Arar was sent to his native Syria, where he was tortured and interrogated in a tiny underground cell for nearly a year. Just after the Court’s decision was announced, Arar revealed a major new development: Canada’s federal law enforcement agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, is conducting a criminal investigation into US and Syrian officials for their role in Arar’s rendition and torture. We speak to Maher Arar. We turn now to the second part of my interview with Johan Galtung. Known as a founder of the field of peace and conflict studies, he’s spent the past half-century pursuing nonviolent conflict resolution in international relations. His latest book is The Fall of the US Empire – And Then What?: Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? US Fascism or US Blossoming? I spoke to him last week about his prediction of the collapse of US empire in ten years, by 2020. In this second part of our interview, Galtung discusses his assessment of President Obama, the US corporate media and more. But we began with the war in Afghanistan, where he has worked extensively in attempts at conflict resolution. "Democracy Now!" is a daily independent newshour.
GRITtv: Off the Map and Outside the Law
In Trevor Paglen's new book, Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World, he investigates the "off the map" locations of covert government activity, including the "salt pit" in Kabul where Khaled El-Masri was held.
Ben Wizner, from the ACLU's National Security Project, is El-Masri's lawyer and he joins Paglen in studio with Laura to talk about black sites, government secrecy, and why anything goes when prisoners are taken off the map.
Outlawed
Extraordinary rendition refers to the practice of abducting foreign nationals for interrogation and detention in secret overseas prisons, often in countries which are notorious for torturing prisoners. Produced by WITNESS and 15 other human rights organizations, "Outlawed" lifts the veil on rendition through the stories of two men: Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen on vacation who was seized on vacation and held for 17 months in Macedonia and Afghanistan before being released; and Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian national and UK resident who was released from Guantanamo Feb. 22, 2009. Media That Matters brings you inspiring films by youth and independent filmmakers committed to changing the world in 8 minutes or less.
GRITtv: Will Holder Prosecute Architects of Torture Policy?
Is it possible that the Obama administration?s attempt to prosecute the crimes of the Bush administration could actually be worse than doing nothing? That's what Andrew Sullivan concluded in response to an LA Times article suggesting that Holder will prosecute only those who went beyond the parameters outlined by the Bush administration torture memos. "This strikes me as the very very worst of all possible worlds," writes Sullivan, "the kind of split-the-difference pragmatism that will end up alienating everyone." Scott Horton, Contributing Editor at Harper's Magazine, Vince Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Vijay Padmanabhan, former US State Department Lawyer and a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law on the Justice Department decision.
