US Govt greenlights torture?
Quote:
U.S. can use torture-induced evidence
12/3/2004 10:55:00 AM GMT
The U.S. government said that evidence obtained by torture can be used by the U.S. military in determining whether to detain a foreign suspect indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an enemy combatant.
Information gained by torture have not been admitted in U.S. courts for about 70 years but the U.S. military panels in charge of the detention of 550 foreign suspects as enemy combatants at Guantanamo are permitted to use such evidence, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle said at a U.S. District Court hearing Thursday.
Some of the detainees have filed lawsuits to contest their confinement without being charged for at least three years. At the hearing, Boyle demanded District Judge Richard J. Leon to dismiss their cases.
Lawyers for the prisoners said that some were mainly detained on evidence obtained by torture, which they said breached the fundamental justice and U.S. due process standards.
Boyle said in a similar hearing Wednesday that the inmates "have no constitutional rights enforceable in this court."
Judge Leon asked whether a detention based only on evidence gained by torture would be illegal, because "torture is illegal. We all know that." Boyle said that if the enemy combatant status review tribunals "determine that evidence of questionable provenance were reliable, nothing in the due process clause (of the Constitution) prohibits them from relying on it."
Judge Leon asked whether there were any limitations on using torture-gained evidence. Boyle replied that the United States would never issue a policy that would ban information gathered by questionable practices like torture by a foreign power.
"About 70 years ago, the Supreme Court stopped the use of evidence produced by third-degree tactics largely on the theory that it was totally unreliable," Harvard Law Professor Philip B. Heymann, a former deputy U.S. attorney general, said.
Subsequent high court rulings were based on revulsion at "the unfairness and brutality of it and later on the idea that confessions ought to be free and uncompelled."
Boyle also said that torture was against U.S. policy and any such practices must be "forwarded through command channels for military discipline." He added that some U.S. soldiers at Guantanamo had been disciplined for misconduct, including a female interrogator who took off her shirt during an interview.
The enemy combatant status review tribunals include three colonels and lieutenant colonels. They were established after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the prisoners could have an opportunity to challenge their detention. The panels have worked on 440 of the detainees so far but only one had been freed.
The military also established an annual administrative review panel which decides whether the prisoner still poses a threat to the U.S. but doesn't review enemy combatant status. Administrative reviews have been completed for 161.
Acknowledging that the prisoners can not have access to lawyers at the combatant status review proceedings and can not know the evidence against them, attorney Wes Powell said "there is no meaningful opportunity in the (proceedings) to rebut the government's claims."
Source
:huh:
How much lower can they sink now? Is this not effictively telling the world that torturing prisoners is perfectly acceptable??
And if its perfectly acceptable what about the soldiers who have have been charged and imprisoned over the 'torturing' in Abu Gharib?
Re: US Govt greenlights torture?
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanB
Source
:huh:
How much lower can they sink now? Is this not effictively telling the world that torturing prisoners is perfectly acceptable??
And if its perfectly acceptable what about the soldiers who have have been charged and imprisoned over the 'torturing' in Abu Gharib?
Torture me enough and I'll start making up shit just to stop the torture.
The soldiers in Abu Gharib were not trying gain information. They were just being assholes.
Bottomline though: ALL governments torture. It's stupid for any country to admit though. Just do it and STFU about it. :dry:
Re: US Govt greenlights torture?
To be honest, I have a tendency to dismiss anything a news site has to say, whether true or not when the phrase "inbred niggers" is on the front page....
Re: US Govt greenlights torture?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Comic_Peddler
To be honest, I have a tendency to dismiss anything a news site has to say, whether true or not when the phrase "inbred niggers" is on the front page....
I normally don't even click the links at all.
I've done work for Aljazeera and they come off as very professional like many other news organizations. It's too bad that they have a clearly biased underbelly in which they rarely criticize their own.
I didn't see the inbred niggers btw.
Re: US Govt greenlights torture?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Busyman
Torture me enough and I'll start making up shit just to stop the torture.
That sentence there shows the exact problem though with any of this so called 'evidence'
Fair enough Comic Peddlar but, erm, whats that got to do with it? :unsure:
Re: US Govt greenlights torture?
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanB
That sentence there shows the exact problem though with any of this so called 'evidence'
Agreed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanB
Fair enough Comic Peddlar but, erm, whats that got to do with it? :unsure:
The validity of the article maybe? :huh:
Re: US Govt greenlights torture?
I wondered if it was relevant to the site I got it from 'cos I didn't see anything like that mentioned, and I went back and double checked too
Re: US Govt greenlights torture?
The inbred bit was a comment made by a reader (from the UK of all places :angry: ).
Just as Yahoo has lots of messages associated with main news stories so it is the case with AJ. Anybody who has ever dipped into the Yahoo messages will have noticed they are pretty much a bunch of moronic hate fests. Many of the AJ messages were actually quite civilised but that is probably because those attracted to such things have yet to find the AJ threads.
