Search Results for: cia secret prisons

Publisher and activist Julian Assange appealed to London’s High Court this week in a last-ditch effort to avoid extradition to the US to face espionage charges. Following the hearing which spanned Tuesday and Wednesday, judges will consider whether Assange can appeal an earlier ruling ordering his extradition from the UK to the US, where he [...]

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The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found Lithuania liable on Tuesday for assisting the US with the torture of a man from Saudi Arabia at Detention Site Violet, a secret CIA prison in Lithuania, in 2005.  The court found that Lithuania violated several provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights against the applicant [...]

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Marjorie Cohn is a professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California. She has authored publications arguing against the legality of the 2003 US military intervention in Iraq as well as the US-led NATO interventions into Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia. Professor Cohn is also a national board member of Assange [...]

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The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a 7-2 decision that information related to torture at CIA “black sites” is protected under the state secrets privilege, which allows the government to bar the release of information when it would endanger national security. Between December 2003 and September 2004, respondent Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn (Zubaydah), a [...]

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North Carolina has an important connection to the “state secrets” at the center of an October 6 US Supreme Court argument. In this case, Guantanamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah seeks testimony from two former CIA contractors, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, on torture he suffered at a secret CIA prison in Poland. The contractors’ evidence would [...]

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Guantanamo Bay detainee Abu Zubaydah, who has been detained for 19 years without charges or a trial, filed a complaint on Friday with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions (UNWGAD) requesting intervention in his case. Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan after the September 11 attacks and was held and tortured by the CIA in [...]

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Army Colonel James Pohl, the US Military judge tasked with overseeing 9/11 cases, announced his retirement Monday before the completion of the trials that began in May 2012 and have seen numerous delays. “I have made a personal decision not to request an additional voluntary retiree recall and thus I will leave active duty after 38 [...]

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June 26th is the United Nations’ International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. Its purpose — to denounce the crime of torture and proclaim solidarity with its survivors — is in stark opposition to the policy of my government. As a former Chief Prosecutor of an international war crimes tribunal in West Africa, I walked [...]

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