Holder vs Humanitarian law and Arar vs Ashcroft both pass in Govt favour

[Adios]

Next administration move will be to designate the ACLU a terrorist organization.

[Adios]

UPDATE:  Politico's Josh Gerstein reports  that the administration has magnanimously deigned to grant permission to the ACLU and CCR to represent Awlaki's father (and Awlaki's interests).  The primary effects of this decision are two-fold:  it (1) moots the ACLU/CCR's legal challenge to the administration's licensing scheme, thus enabling them to avoid this legal challenge (and thus continue to wield this asserted power until someone else challenges its legality), and (2) ensures that the ACLU and CCR will now promptly file the lawsuit seeking to enjoin the administration from killing Awlaki without criminal charges or any other due process of any kind.  Gerstein is a good reporter and his article on the administration's response to this lawsuit is worth reading.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/03/awlaki/index.html

[Adios]

As far as I can tell they stepped back on this either because they knew it would collapse on them or the administration isn't yet prepared to just say, "So?"

[Requia ☣]

Given that SCOTUS already agreed that the administration can do this, I don't see a lot of risk.

[Adios]

Given that SCOTUS already agreed that the administration can do this, I don't see a lot of risk.

Gee, that must be why they backed down, huh?

[Cain]

Threats of rape are now allowed in order to extract confessions:

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/08/11/gitmo-rape/

In the first full war crimes tribunal of the Obama administration, a military judge held that a detainee who confessed to killing an American solider after he was threatened with being gang-raped to death if he did not cooperate may nonetheless have that confession used against him at trial:

   

In May hearings, a man identified as Interrogator 1 said in testimony that he threatened Mr. Khadr with being gang-raped to death if he did not co-operate. That interrogator was later identified as former U.S. Army Sergeant Joshua Claus. He has also been convicted of abusing a different detainee and has left the military.

    Mr. Khadr's military-appointed lawyer, Lieutenant-Colonel Jon Jackson, argued this instance, as well as other alleged instances of torture and coercion, are enough to render any future confessions – even those in so-called "clean" interrogations – inadmissible in court.

    "The well was poisoned: The government can't cleanse the well by saying, 'Well, someone else came in and was nice to him,' " Col. Jackson said.

    Not so, the prosecution countered: All the confessions and testimony it plans to bring forward were freely offered by Mr. Khadr to people who treated him well. [...]

    Military judge Colonel Patrick Parrish sided with the prosecution

Khadr was only 15 years old at the time of his capture and confession, earning his tribunal a strong condemnation from the United Nations.  In the words of the UN, "Juvenile justice standards are clear. Children should not be tried before military tribunals."

The military judge's decision to admit a coerced confession raises even more troubling questions about whether this particular tribunal will reach accurate results.  As the Supreme Court recognized almost 75 years ago, confessions extracted by "brutality and violence" are akin to "deliberate deception" of the court because they reveal little about a suspect's guilt or innocence and everything about their very human desire to avoid or end torture. This principle obviously applies to Khadr.  A prisoner who is convinced that they will be raped and murdered if they do not confess has nothing to lose — and what remains of their personal dignity to gain — by doing so.

A member of Khadr's legal team called the judge's decision a "disgrace," and that lawyer is right.  Coerced confessions are not simply inhumane — and not simply un-American — they produce wholly unreliable evidence.  Mr. Khadr may actually be guilty, but a confession extracted by a rape threat does nothing to prove this point.

[Juana]

 

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

That is fucked up.

[Jenne]

What is WRONG with these fucking tribunal judges?  Fucking desperate assholes, making serious egregious errors.  Credibility severely compromised there.  Fuck.

[Requia ☣]

That's the tribunal judge's job Jen.  Why do you think they waited for the tribunals to give any trials?  They allow hearsay in these things.  Hearsay!

[Jenne]

...don't make it good nor right.  And fuck Obama if this shit's gonna continue unchecked.