British lawyer says US threatened him with Guantanamo internment

[maddezmom]

LONDON (AFP) - Clive Stafford-Smith, a British lawyer who represents detainees at the US Guantanamo Bay naval base, said in a newspaper interview that he was threatened with internment there.

Stafford-Smith, who has made at least eight trips to the Cuba-based camp to consult with several of the terrorism suspects he represents, told The Guardian that the US military accused him of inciting inmates to commit suicide and go on hunger strike.

He also said that one of his clients had been repeatedly interrogated in an attempt to implicate him in three suicides.

more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060927/wl_uk_afp/usbritainguantanamolawyercourt

Laywer: officer at Guantánamo threatened me

Vikram Dodd
Wednesday September 27, 2006
The Guardian


A British lawyer who represents detainees at Guantánamo Bay yesterday claimed he was threatened with internment at the notorious camp by a US military officer.

Clive Stafford-Smith told the Guardian that the US military claimed he had incited inmates to commit suicide and go on hunger strike. Mr Stafford-Smith says the US has been repeatedly interrogating one of his clients to try to get him to implicate him in three suicides. Mr Stafford-Smith has made at least eight visits to the camp, situated on Cuban land occupied by the US, to consult with several detainees he represents.

more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,1881721,00.html

[Eugene]

1. and the new detainees bill will let them carry out that threat.

Step out of line and you too can become an "enemy combatant."
Scary!

[w4rma]

2. Yes. That bill must never become law. (nt)

[Peace Patriot]

3. Bad sign.

REMEDY:

Bust the Machines--Vote by Absentee Ballot this November.

If everybody who despises the Bush Junta (60% to 70% of the American people) votes by Absentee Ballot this fall, the reign of these extremely insecure, insider hackable, Bushite-corporate controlled electronic voting machines will be OVER!

[RC]

6. Voting by absentee ballot isn't the answer.

Too easy to lose or otherwise disqualify.

[Peace Patriot]

11. "Too easy to lose or disqualify"? That's only if you consider yourself to

be a lonely, isolated individual, and/or are convinced that, as a progressive, you are a member of the minority.

If ENOUGH PEOPLE boycott these rigged electronic machines--if EVERYONE who despises the Bush Junta (60% to 70% of the American people)--votes by Absentee Ballot (or other paper ballot option, boycotting ALL electronic machines), the reign of these machines is OVER!

The Montgomery Bus Boycott did not end segregation all by itself. It was the BEGINNING of reform--a way to mobilize and FORCE reform, as well as a direct hit on the economics of segregation.

The black citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, went to work--they had to!--but they didn't take the bus--they WALKED!

Similarly, we MUST vote--but by Absentee Ballot voting, we REFUSE to vote on these rigged machines. And we simultaneously hit 'em in their pocketbook--all these billions of dollars pouring through corrupt election officials' fingers, right into the pockets of the Bushite corporations that own and control the "trade secret" electronic code that "counts" all our votes.

And if AB voting is big enough--a major citizen "vote on confidence" in this rigged system--THEN we have an election reform movement with clout, with the ability to demand restoration of TRANSPARENT vote counting.

I make no claims about the safety of AB voting. It's not particularly safe. And it will not insure accurate vote counts this fall. (That is impossible.) But what it CAN do--if the AB vote is big enough--is create sufficient panic and crisis in the election theft system, to FORCE reform NOW, and possibly save the '08 primaries and general election from "trade secret" corporate vote tabulation (by private corporations with very close ties to the Bush Junta).

Many people are already voting by AB (it's up to 50% in Los Angeles) because they DON'T TRUST these machines. And the bigger it gets, the more scrutiny there will be on the handling of AB votes and on the whole system. Further, it will HELP turnout. To those disillusioned people who say "it's all rigged" and don't want to vote, we say: But this is a PROTEST aimed at UN-rigging the system. No excuse not to vote. It's a great motivator. And there is no downside to this protest. Your optiscan vote is as vulnerable as your AB vote. So why vote on optiscans, and reward Bushite corporations with big bucks for stealing our elections? No way! BOYCOTT ALL THEIR MACHINES!

We've got to start SOMEWHERE. And the time is NOW.

JOIN WITH OTHERS to opposed rigged electronics in our voting system by voting with an Absentee Ballot this fall!

And hand-deliver it to your polling place on election day (if possible)--or mail it registered/return receipt requested, or by Fed Ex (to make sure it gets there). If you have another paper ballot option (NOT a "provisional" ballot--and NOT an optiscan ballot--a real ballot--use that.)

[WHAT]

13. I agree, RC, absentee ballots are too risky...

the companies that verify registration, signatures, etc. are vulnerable to widespread manipulation that can be used to target disenfranchisement of large swaths of voters. It's not just loosing ballots, it's the programs that set the criteria for accepting registrations,etc. Was it Choice Point that disenfranchised so many Florida voters?...anyway, that's what I'm thinking.

[maddezmom]

4. xpost: Attorneys for Guantanamo Detainees could be detained as Enemy Comba

kerry-is-my-prez posted this in GD:

Attorneys for Guantanamo Detainees could be detained as Enemy Combatants
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=zQrIt...

ATTORNEYS FOR GUANTANAMO DETAINEES COULD BE DETAINED AS ENEMY COMBATANTS UNDER NEW LEGISLATION

President Given Undue Power to Silence Critics
Synopsis

On September 26, 2006, attorneys for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) determined that what appears to be the final version of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 could allow the government to detain the attorneys themselves as 'enemy combatants.' CCR Legal Director Bill Goodman said: "This ominously broad definition of enemy combatants would mean that almost anyone who actively opposes the President or the government could be locked up indefinitely. This bill makes a mockery of the rule of law."


The current version of the Military Commissions redefines an "unlawful enemy combatant" (UEC) so broadly that it could include anyone who organizes a march against the war in Iraq. The bill defines a UEC as "a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" or anyone who "has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense of the United States." The definition makes no reference to citizenship and therefore could be read to include any number of individuals, including:

CCR attorneys and other habeas counsel, Federal Public Defenders and military defense counsel for detainees at Guantánamo Bay
Any person who has given $5 to a charity working with orphans in Afghanistan that turns out to be associated in some fashion with someone who may be a member of the Taliban
The bill also currently includes provisions so sweeping that they strip U.S. courts of jurisdiction over habeas petitions by any non-citizen detained by the government anywhere. Because there is no geographic limitation in the bill's language, it would allow the President to detain any non-citizen without their ever having the chance to challenge their detention in court: "No court... shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination." Examples of people who could be detained indefinitely with no access to a court include:

more:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2231364

[Supersedeas]

14. Fascism begins by removing lawyers and intellectuals from the ranks of

society.

[annabanana]

5. ANYONE could go to gitmo with this legislation...

All the idiot-king has to do is decide that you're an "enemy combatant". That's it. That's all it would take and every single civil liberty you thought you had would go up in smoke in that instant. There would be nothing you could do about it. No one would even know. You'd just disappear, leaving your family to wonder where you went.

[Amonester]

8. Thousands of innocents disappeared like that during the reign of

the extreme right-wing regime of Pinochet in Chile.

Don't let the lil' AWOL king and his puppeteers's Junta decide who's their enemy they want to torture and who is not!

K&R & ACT!

[Tellurian]

10. Yes, and here's the link to prove it..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=2848356

Hidden Stinger in Bush NIE release

by Valtin
Tue Sep 26, 2006 at 05:58:14 PM PDT

I was reading the release of Bush's NIE, which he has redacted to make his case that we must "stay the course" in Iraq. But my eyes popped out when I got to the end of it.

Here's the link:
Declassified Key Judgments of the National
Intelligence Estimate “Trends in Global Terrorism:
Implications for the United States” dated April 2006
http://counterterrorismblog.org/site-resources/images/D...

Now, here's the section that bothered me, or "terrorism, it's not just for Muslims anymore":

Valtin's diary :: ::

Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests. The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age, raising the likelihood of surprise attacks by unknown groups whose members and supporters may be difficult to pinpoint.


This sinister amalgam is to equate leftist, nationalists, anti-globalization activists, etc., with fundamentalist Islamic terrorism. It assumes such terrorism will occur, and, as such, is a set-up for a crackdown on such groups.

If the suspension of habeas corpus, the spread of state terror through the use of torture, and the labelling of U.S. citizens as "combatants" isn't enough, this quote should remind us of how the government is thinking of handling those who won't follow the Decider's dictates.


See also David Cole's article in the Harvard Law Review, The New McCarthyism: Repeating History in the War on Terrorism

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/crcl/v.38/cole...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/26/205814/469

[maddezmom]

12. interesting verbage isn't it

thanks for posting

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. On BBC radio tonight: letters from Guantanamo

Letters written by an Al Jazeera cameraman who has been held without charge at Guantanamo for 5 years. Clive Stafford-Smith is his lawyer, and the letters are to him and the cameraman's family. It will be broadcast at 8pm BST - 3pm EST - today, and should be available for at least a week online after that:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/pip/np79a/

A 5 minute audio news clip summarising it, from this morning: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today5_gito_20060927.ram

[maddezmom]

9. thanks for posting

will be listening