Tunisia abusing ex-Guantanamo detainees despite promising humane treatment: HRW News
Tunisia abusing ex-Guantanamo detainees despite promising humane treatment: HRW

[JURIST] Tunisian officials have been mistreating and abusing two former Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainees since their release from the US prison facility in June, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report [text] released Wednesday. The report alleges that the two men, who were held at Guantanamo Bay for five years without being charged with a crime, have been beaten, threatened, and coerced to confess to criminal charges [press release] since their return to Tunisia eleven weeks ago. They are currently in jail awaiting charges. According to HRW, Tunisia is allowing the mistreatment to occur despite having provided the US with diplomatic assurances that the prisoners would not be abused upon return.

The US Department of Defense transferred [JURIST report] the two men back to Tunisia in June after they passed through a review process. Since 2002, approximately 435 detainees have been transferred out of Guantanamo and approximately 340 remain [press release]. In the report, HRW asked the US to establish an advance notice of transfer procedure and allow potential transferees to challenge their transfers in federal court if they believe they could be subject to torture in their home country.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.