Lifelong Detention Without Trial, Torture Without Accountability

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Wednesday September 20, 2006 01:50 by Nunca Mais ! - Irish Centre for Human Rights

"It would be unconstitutional. It would be illegal. It would be essentially a war crime to do it ..."

Newsweek magazine reports the US administration wants to maintain at least seven existing CIA interrogation methods for use against high-level detainees. The techniques include induced hypothermia; long periods of forced standing; sleep deprivation and so called "attention slapping."

The government, the Congress, is abolishing the writ of habeas corpus. The habeas corpus writ is the right to challenge your detention once you’re picked up by the United States. It would apply to Guantanamo. It would apply to everybody in Bagram. And it basically says that anybody picked up, now or in the future or who is there now, no longer has the writ of habeas corpus.

(Bush) "could certainly do a signing statement, like you said, and say, “I’m not going to enforce this bill. I’m still going to torture people.” It would be unconstitutional. It would be illegal. It would be essentially a war crime to do it, in my view. But the way this president has gone, my belief is that he has committed war crimes".

Full story on Bush's and the US's pell-mell descent into evil is on the Democracy Now weblink !