US military team threatened intel personnel who witnessed Iraq prisoner abuses News
US military team threatened intel personnel who witnessed Iraq prisoner abuses

[JURIST] Documents released Tuesday by the ACLU pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act proceeding say that Defense Intelligence Agency personnel in Iraq who witnessed abuses of prisoners by a US Special Forces team were threatened to prevent them reporting those abuses, had their car keys taken and e-mails monitored, and were warned not to leave their base. See a scanned copy of DIA chief Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby's June 25, 2004 memo to the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence here [PDF]. Other documents show what the ACLU claims was a "rift" between the FBI and military authorities about appropriate and effective methods of interrogating prisoners. The ACLU revelations come a day after AP obtained a letter from a senior FBI counterterror expert complaining of "highly aggressive" military interrogations of prisoners at Guantanamo as early as 2002, previously reported in JURIST's Paper Chase. The ACLU press release on the documents released Tuesday is here. The documents themselves, and other torture-related materials obtained through ACLU FOIA reveals, are collected here.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns during Vietnam Conflict

On November 29, 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was resigning from his office to accept an appointment as head of the World Bank. The announcement came as the Vietnam Conflict was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad.