Gitmo Trials

Martin Scheinin, a Finnish law professor, has reported on his observations of the trial of Salid Ahmed Hamdan, who is incarcerated at the U.S prison at Guantanamo Bay. Scheinin told the U.N. Human Rights Council today that it would be impossible for anyone to mount an adequate defense at the prison, given that no one can bring witnesses from abroad. Moreover, the defense cannot even call other detainees at the prison camp as witnesses.

Scheinin also said the U.S. would need to allow him to conduct unmonitored interviews with prisoners at U.S. camps before he could provide a complete assessment of conditions at those prisons.

New Moon At Gitmo

What would I do if federal agents suddenly broke into my house and hauled me off to a prison camp in the Caribbean, claiming all the while that I posed a terrorist threat to the United States? What if my interrogators used "aggressive techniques"?

Would I bravely continue to protest my innocence? Would I give my interrogators the name of someone I knew just to make them less aggressive? Or would I do what Abdul Rahman el-Amri did. He killed himself in May of this year.

Three other men took their own lives in June 2006.

George Bush repeated today that the United States does not torture prisoners.

British Resident Freed From Torture Camp

The Bush-Cheney government says Omar Deghayes is a terrorist. The man's family and the British government say it's a case of mistaken identity.

Deghayes was a Libyan refugee living in England with his family until his arrest in Pakistan five years ago. U.S. operatives kidnapped him and took him to the notorious prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Mr. Deghayes is a lawyer. His brother thanked the British government for gaining the man's release, noting that it will end five years of "torture and misery."