Triple Word Score
There's a piece in this week's New Yorker about US Attorney General, Eric Holder, and his decision to have captured terrorists stand civilian trial rather than decide their case through military tribunals. It's sad and hilarious that a "large number of people" (my polite way of hinting at Republicans without making this a political statement) are afraid we won't be able to convict captured terrorists because most of the facts and testimony collected for their cases were gained through torture essentially sanctioned by former President Cheney's policy of act questionably now and let someone else deal with the consequences later. The confessions, therefore, wouldn't be able to be used in civilian court.
The article gives an example of one such detainee whose testimony would not be admissible in a fair civilian trial because it was provided after US interrogators applied less than humane motivation to spill the beans:
"In a decision that signalled trouble for the viability of Clean Team-type prosecutions, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ruled that the government must release another Guantánamo prisoner, Farhi Bin Mohammed, even though F.B.I. agents had elicited incriminating evidence against him from a fellow-detainee, Binyam Mohamed, without coercion. Her reason was that interrogators in Morocco had, among other abuses, cut Binyam Mohamed’s penis with a scalpel. After such mistreatment, Kessler found, it was impossible to regard later statements as free of taint."
You know what else is free of taint? Binyam Mohamed's grundle after the scalpel had its say.
You're welcome.
You can read the full story here.
The article gives an example of one such detainee whose testimony would not be admissible in a fair civilian trial because it was provided after US interrogators applied less than humane motivation to spill the beans:
"In a decision that signalled trouble for the viability of Clean Team-type prosecutions, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ruled that the government must release another Guantánamo prisoner, Farhi Bin Mohammed, even though F.B.I. agents had elicited incriminating evidence against him from a fellow-detainee, Binyam Mohamed, without coercion. Her reason was that interrogators in Morocco had, among other abuses, cut Binyam Mohamed’s penis with a scalpel. After such mistreatment, Kessler found, it was impossible to regard later statements as free of taint."
You know what else is free of taint? Binyam Mohamed's grundle after the scalpel had its say.
You're welcome.
You can read the full story here.