ICRC not visiting all US detainees, official confirms News
ICRC not visiting all US detainees, official confirms

[JURIST] The US State Department [official website] confirmed Thursday that the International Committee of the Red Cross [official website] does not have access to all US detainees, but said that ICRC had access to "absolutely everybody" held at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive]. John Bellinger, top lawyer at the State Department, declined to give further details about detainees the ICRC has no access to, though he did dismiss allegations about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe [JURIST report] as "ludicrous". In July 2004, the ICRC said it feared that the US was holding terror suspects secretly [JURIST report], outside of facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq, in violation of the Geneva Conventions [ICRC materials]. Last month, advocacy group Human Rights Watch released a list of 26 'ghost detainees' [text; JURIST report] that HRW says the US has not reported but is holding incommunicado and possibly torturing. Reuters has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Egypt President Anwar Sadat visits Israel

On November 19, 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Israel, becoming the first leader of an Arab nation to officially visit. Two years later, President Sadat became the first Arab leader to recognize Israel by signing the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty. Read President Sadat's address to the Israeli Knesset.

Jay Treaty signed

On November 19, 1794, US Chief Justice John Jay and British foreign secretary Lord Grenville signed a treaty in Philadelphia under which British forces pulled out of the disputed Northwest Territory. Review the Jay Treaty.