December, 08 2008, 01:54pm EDT
Video Produced By ACLU And Brave New Films Reveals Flaws In Guantanamo Military Commissions
Former Commission Lawyers Agree Sham Trial System Should Be Shut Down
NEW YORK
The American Civil Liberties Union is pleased to announce a new video
available online today featuring three military officials who enumerate
the egregious flaws in the Guantanamo military commissions. The video
features Navy Lt. Commander Brian Mizer, who served as commission
defense counsel for convicted Guantanamo detainee Salim Hamdan and has
been serving as defense counsel for Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, one of the
Guantanamo detainees charged with crimes related to the 9/11 attacks
who offered to plead guilty today before a military commission; Air
Force Major David J.R. Frakt, who is the commission defense counsel for
Omar Jawad; and Lt. Colonel Darrel John Vandeveld, who was a senior
military commission prosecutor before resigning in protest.
"When I realized that I could not
fulfill my ethical obligations as a prosecutor because of the state of
chaos that reigned at the commissions prosecution office, I resigned.
And I resigned out of conscience," says Vandeveld in the video.
Vandeveld served as a senior prosecutor in the military commissions
from May 2007 to September 2008.
The video is the second in a series
of shorts about Guantanamo produced by the ACLU in partnership with
Brave New Foundation, a leading producer of online videos about today's
most pressing issues. It is part of an ACLU campaign calling on
President-elect Obama to close the Guantanamo prison and end the
military commissions on day one of his presidency. Among other things,
the proceedings allow the admission of secret evidence, hearsay and
evidence obtained through torture.
"The military commissions have been
a legal farce from the beginning to the bitter end," said Anthony D.
Romero, the Executive Director of the ACLU. "Any cases in the military
commissions can and should be prosecuted in time-tested U.S. or
military courts where the rule of law still applies. That is the only
way justice can be served."
Today's video, along with a petition calling on Obama to shut down Guantanamo and the military commissions, is online at: closegitmo.com
The ACLU is at Guantanamo this week
for hearings in the 9/11-related military commission cases. The ACLU
John Adams Project, a partnership with the National Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers, has sponsored expert civilian counsel who
have been assisting the under-resourced military defense counsel for
several Guantanamo detainees. More information is available online at: www.aclu.org/johnadams
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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Amid Spying Fight, House Passes Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act
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While applauding the U.S. House of Representatives' bipartisan passage of a bill to ensure that "law enforcement and intelligence agencies can't do an end-run around the Constitution by buying information from data brokers" on Wednesday, privacy advocates highlighted that Congress is trying to extend and expand a long-abused government spying program.
The House voted 219-199 for Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (FANFSA), which won support from 96 Democrats and 123 Republicans, including the lead sponsor, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Named for the constitutional amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, H.R. 4639 would close what campaigners call the data broker loophole.
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Wednesday's vote followed the House sending the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act to the Senate. H.R. 7888 would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for warrantless spying on noncitizens abroad but also sweeps up Americans' data.
The House notably included an amendment forcing a wide range of individuals and businesses to cooperate with government spying operations but rejected an amendment that would have added a warrant requirement to the bill, which the Senate could vote on as soon as Thursday.
Noting those decisions on the FISA reauthorization legislation, Ruddock stressed that "today's vote is a victory but follows a recent loss and ongoing threat as that Section 702 bill moves to the Senate this week too."
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Jeramie Scott, senior counsel and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Project on Surveillance Oversight, also praised the House's FANFSA passage on Wednesday.
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Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU, similarly said Wednesday that "the bipartisan passage of this bill is a flashing warning sign to the government that if it wants our data, it must get a warrant."
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The renewed push for Palestine's U.N. membership comes as Israel wages a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, which hasn't controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, rejected the Biden administration's requests to hold off on seeking full membership.
"We wanted the U.S. to provide a substantive alternative to U.N. recognition. They didn't," one unnamed Palestinian official toldAxios on Wednesday. "We believe full membership in the U.N. for Palestine is way overdue. We have waited more than 12 years since our initial request."
As The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw noted:
Since 2011, the U.N. Security Council has rejected the Palestinian Authority's request for full member status. On April 2, the Palestinian Observer Mission to the U.N. requested that the council once again take up consideration of its membership application. According to the first State Department cable, U.N. meetings since the beginning of April suggest that Algeria, China, Guyana, Mozambique, Russia, Slovenia, Sierra Leone, and Malta support granting Palestine full membership to the U.N. It also says that France, Japan, and Korea are undecided, while the United Kingdom will likely abstain from a vote.
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Belgium—which is seeking economic sanctions against Israel in response to its genocidal war on Gaza—is expected to join Spain's push for Palestinian statehood after the country's European Union presidency expires in June.
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"After a year of preparation, we finally open the doors to our new research consortium, exposing the global network of reactionary forces that corrode our democracies, destroy our planet, and drive us closer to world war," the group added.
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Yanis Varoufakis, a PI member and secretary-general of the left-wing Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, called the database "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
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