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Leading Rights Groups Call On Obama To Release Prisoner Abuse Photos
CLU Calls On Court To Adhere To Mandate Requiring Release Of Abuse Photos
NEW YORK
Several
of the nation's leading human rights and civil liberties organizations
sent a letter to President Obama today urging him to release photos
depicting the abuse of detainees by U.S. personnel overseas.
The letter, signed by the American
Civil Liberties Union, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press,
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and dozens of other groups,
calls on the president to reconsider his decision to block the release
of the photos. It states, "The hallmark of an open society is that we
do not conceal information that reflects poorly on us - we expose it to
the light of day, so that wrongdoers can be held accountable and future
abuses prevented."
"The disclosure of these photographs
serves as a further reminder that abuse of prisoners in
U.S.-administered detention centers was systemic," said Jameel Jaffer,
Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "Some of the abuse
occurred because senior civilian and military officials created a
culture of impunity in which abuse was tolerated, and some of the abuse
was expressly authorized. It's imperative that senior officials who
condoned or authorized abuse now be held accountable for their
actions."
Also today, the ACLU asked a federal
appeals court to uphold its earlier ruling that the government must
release the photos. On May 28, the government filed a motion asking the
court to recall its mandate ordering their release, and today the ACLU
filed its opposition to that motion.
"The public has an undeniable right
to see these photos. As disturbing as they may be, it is critical that
the American people know the full truth about the abuse that occurred
in their name. The government's decision to suppress the photos is
fundamentally inconsistent with President Obama's own promise of
transparency and accountability," said Amrit Singh, staff attorney with
the ACLU. "The government has failed to show any good cause for the
court to recall its mandate that the photos be released, and we are
confident the court will uphold its original order."
In September 2008, the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered the government to turn over the
photos in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
lawsuit. The Obama administration originally indicated that it would
not appeal that decision and would release the photos, but abruptly
reversed its commitment to do so shortly before the agreed-upon
deadline.
In addition to Jaffer and Singh,
attorneys on the case are Judy Rabinovitz of the national ACLU; Arthur
Eisenberg and Beth Haroules of the New York Civil Liberties Union;
Lawrence S. Lustberg and Jenny Brooke Condon of the New Jersey-based
law firm Gibbons P.C.; and Shayana Kadidal and Michael Ratner of the
Center for Constitutional Rights.
More information about the ACLU's FOIA lawsuit, including today's filing, is online at: www.aclu.org/torturefoia
The full text of the letter to President Obama is below and available online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/39709res20090601.html
June 1, 2009
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Obama:
We write to express our profound
disappointment with your decision on May 13 to block the release of
photographs depicting abuse of detainees by U.S. personnel overseas.
We urge you to reconsider that misguided decision and to renew your
commitment to our nation's most fundamental principles.
On your first full day in office,
you eloquently proclaimed your administration's commitment to the
principle of open government. You said: "A democracy requires
accountability, and accountability requires transparency." That is
exactly right. The hallmark of an open society is that we do not
conceal information that reflects poorly on us - we expose it to the
light of day, so that wrongdoers can be held accountable and future
abuses prevented.
These photographs will no doubt be
disturbing, as they should be. And we understand your concern about
reaction to them overseas. But suppressing information to prevent
public anger is inconsistent with democratic principles. The Pentagon
should release the photos while reaffirming to the world that the U.S.
repudiates such barbaric behavior and is committed to dismantling the
culture that allowed it to occur. In the end, full disclosure of the
crimes committed by our government will make us all safer.
The last eight years have
demonstrated all too painfully that excessive secrecy creates a fertile
environment for grave abuses. Those abuses have tarnished our nation's
reputation and damaged its security. We will restore our standing as a
leader on human rights not by hiding images of our failures, but by
demonstrating that those failures will not go unpunished.
As you yourself have stated, "the
Government should not keep information confidential merely because
public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and
failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract
fears." Suppressing photographs of abuse places your administration
on the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of history. We hope
you will reconsider your decision.
Sincerely,
Alliance for Justice
American Civil Liberties Union
Amnesty International
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Center for Constitutional Rights
Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU School of Law
Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
CREDO Mobile
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Feminists for Free Expression
Government Accountability Project
Human Rights Watch
International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA)
Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School
National Security Archive
OMB Watch
OpenTheGovernment.org
PEN American Center
Physicians for Human Rights
Progressive Librarians Guild (PLG)
Reporters Without Borders
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society
Veterans for Common Sense
Veterans For Peace
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.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
Top Medical Organizations Warn RFK Jr. Putting American Kids 'At Grave and Immediate Risk'
"Truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary... he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies," stated a new lawsuit.
Jul 07, 2025
Six major medical organizations on Monday filed a lawsuit against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. alleging he is putting American children at "grave and immediate risk" because of his policy on vaccines.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit—including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Massachusetts Public Health Association, and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine—charged that Kennedy earlier this year made a "baseless and uninformed policy decision" when he removed vaccinations against Covid-19 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) official immunization schedule for "healthy" children and pregnant women.
The organizations emphasized that unless Kennedy's decision is reversed, "all children remain at grave and immediate risk of contracting a preventable disease" and further warned that it "exposes... vulnerable populations to a serious disease with potentially irreversible long-term effects and, in some cases, death."
The plaintiffs further charged that Kennedy's directive removing the Covid-19 vaccines from the immunization schedule was "but one example of the secretary's agenda to dismantle the longstanding... science- and evidence-based vaccine infrastructure that has prevented the deaths of untold millions of Americans."
The complaint then documented Kennedy's long history of statements and articles that have peddled false claims about the safety of vaccinations and pointed to his mass dismissals of staff at HHS and his appointment of likeminded vaccine critics to argue that "it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies."
Given this, the plaintiffs argued that Kennedy's decision to remove the Covid-19 vaccine from immunization schedules was "arbitrary and capricious" based on what they described as "vast and irrefutable evidence," including congressional testimony delivered by Kennedy in which he acknowledged that people shouldn't "be taking medical advice from me"; that Kennedy's directive directly contradicted an article published by the Food and Drug Administration days earlier stating that pregnancy was a condition that "increased a person's risk of severe Covid-19"; and that Kennedy did not identify specific recommendations from professional staff that he used as justification to restrict the availability of the vaccine.
Should courts find that Kennedy's decision was "arbitrary and capricious" as alleged by the plaintiffs, they would have the power to enjoin the policy under the Administrative Procedures Act, which was also employed recently to halt planned mass layoffs at HHS. The medical organizations urged courts to declare Kennedy's policy change "unlawful" and demanded "the restoration of the Covid vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and healthy children ages six months to 17 years" of age.
The medical organizations' lawsuit against Kennedy's vaccination policy comes at a time when infections of measles in the United States have hit a level not seen in more than three decades. The Washington Post, citing data from Johns Hopkins University, reported on Monday that there have been at least 1,277 confirmed cases of measles so far in the U.S. this year and the paper noted that this development "marks a public health reversal in defeating a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable disease as the anti-vaccine movement gains strength."
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2% Wealth Tax on Just 3,000 Billionaires Could Raise $250 Billion a Year: Nobel Economists
"Not only is it necessary to impose a stronger burden of justice on billionaires, but more importantly, it is possible."
Jul 07, 2025
Seven Nobel laureates on Monday published an op-ed advocating for "a minimum tax for the ultrarich, expressed as a percentage of their wealth," in the French newspaper Le Monde.
"They have never been so wealthy and yet contribute very little to the public coffers: From Bernard Arnault to Elon Musk, billionaires have significantly lower tax rates than the average taxpayer," wrote Daron Acemoglu, George Akerlof, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Simon Johnson, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz.
Citing pioneering research from the E.U. Tax Observatory, the renowned economists noted that "ultrawealthy individuals pay around 0% to 0.6% of their wealth in income tax. In a country like the United States, their effective tax rate is around 0.6%, while in a country like France, it is closer to 0.1%."
Although the "ultrawealthy can easily structure their wealth to avoid income tax, which is supposed to be the cornerstone of tax justice," the strategies for doing so differ by region, the experts detailed. Europeans often use family holding companies that are banned in the United States, "which explains why the wealthy are more heavily taxed there than in Europe—though some have still managed to find workarounds."
The good news is that "there is no inevitability here. Not only is it necessary to impose a stronger burden of justice on billionaires, but more importantly, it is possible," argued the economists, who say that taxing the overall wealth of the ultrarich, not just income, is the key.
The wealth tax approach, they wrote, "is effective because it targets all forms of tax optimization, whatever their nature. It is targeted, as it applies only to the wealthiest taxpayers, and only to those among them who engage in tax avoidance."
💡 "One of the most promising avenues is to introduce a minimum tax for the ultra-rich, expressed as a percentage of their wealth."Seven Nobel laureates in economics advocate for the Zucman tax in their latest op-ed.Read the full @lemonde.fr article 👇www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl...
[image or embed]
— EU Tax Observatory (@taxobservatory.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 8:05 AM
The anticipated impact would be significant. As the op-ed highlights: "Globally, a 2% minimum tax on billionaire wealth would generate about $250 billion in tax revenue—from just 3,000 individuals. In Europe, around $50 billion could be raised. And by extending this minimum rate to individuals with wealth over $100 million, these sums would increase significantly."
That's according to a June 2024 report that French economist and E.U. Tax Observatory director Gabriel Zucman prepared for the Group of 20's Brazilian presidency—which was followed by G20 leaders' November commitment to taxing the rich and last month's related proposal from the governments of Brazil, South Africa, and Spain.
"The international movement is underway," the economists declared Monday, also pointing to recent developments on the "Zucman tax" in France. The French National Assembly voted in favor of a 2% minimum tax on wealth exceeding €100 million, or $117 million, in February—but the Senate rejected the measure last month.
The economists urged the European country to keep working at it, writing that "at a time of ballooning public deficits and exploding extreme wealth, the French government must seize the initiative approved by the National Assembly. There is no reason to wait for an international agreement to be finalized—on the contrary, France should lead by example, as it has done in the past," when it was the first country to introduce a value-added tax (VAT).
"As for the risk of tax exile, the bill passed by the National Assembly provides that taxpayers would remain subject to the minimum tax for five years after leaving the country," they wrote. "The government could go further and propose extending this period to 10 years, which would likely reduce the risk of expatriation even more."
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Case Challenging Trump's 'Ideological Deportations' of Pro-Palestine Students Heads to Court
"The policy chills noncitizens from speaking and, by extension, robs these organizations and their U.S. citizen members of noncitizens' perspectives on a matter of significant public debate," the Knight Institute said in a statement on behalf of the plaintiffs.
Jul 07, 2025
The Trump administration, for the first time, had to defend its policy of deporting immigrants for their political views in court Monday.
A case filed by a group of professors will be heard in a Massachusetts federal court. The lawsuit challenges attempts by the Trump administration to arrest and remove foreign-born college students from the country based purely on their pro-Palestine speech.
Though hundreds of cases have been filed against the Trump administration since January, this is one of very few that has reached the trial phase.
The case was filed in March by Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute on behalf of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP); AAUP's Harvard, NYU, and Rutgers campus chapters; and the Middle East Studies Association.
It is one of half a dozen other lawsuits filed following the arrest of Columbia graduate student and protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who was abducted in the dead of night by plainclothes ICE officers and shipped to a detention center for nearly three months.
Khalil and several other students had their legal immigration status revoked not for having committed any crime, but because the Trump administration deemed their views at odds with the "foreign policy objective[s]" of the United States.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the defendant in this case, has acknowledged stripping the legal status of hundreds of student protesters based on their speech.
"The policy chills noncitizens from speaking and, by extension, robs these organizations and their U.S. citizen members of noncitizens' perspectives on a matter of significant public debate," the Knight Institute said in a statement on behalf of the plaintiffs.
In a pre-trial brief, the group argued that this "ideological deportation policy" illegally discriminates against students and faculty based on their pro-Palestinian viewpoints.
"The First Amendment framework that applies is straightforward," the brief said. "If a regulation of speech discriminates based on content or viewpoint, then the regulation is 'presumptively unconstitutional' unless the government demonstrates that it is 'narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.'"
The plaintiffs argue that the intent behind the Trump administration's stripping of green cards and visas from legal holders was to punish speech they found disfavorable and to coerce others into silence.
"Noncitizen members of the AAUP have been chilled by these ideological deportations and forced to self-censor in a variety of different ways, and citizen members have been harmed as a result, because they have been deprived of the insights and engagement of their non-citizen students and colleagues," the brief said.
They cited examples of professors scrubbing their social media accounts to remove commentary on the Israel-Palestine conflict, abandoning research on the Middle East that could prove too "nuanced" for the administration's liking, and even cancelling international travel for academic opportunities for fear of being disallowed entry back into the country.
"The First Amendment does not permit government officials to use the power of their office to silence critics and suppress speech they don’t like," said Andrew Manuel Crespo, a Harvard Law professor and general counsel of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter.
The AAUP lawsuit marks the first time the Trump administration will defend its use of deportations for political speech in court. But it is not the first time the courts will rule on its attacks against higher education.
Courts have blocked the Trump administration's efforts to ban Harvard from hosting foreign students and strip its funding, saying the measures violated due process.
While the case over deportations deals with non-citizens, AAUP President Todd Wolfson said it has implications for free speech for everyone in America.
"The Trump administration is going after international scholars and students who speak their minds about Palestine, but make no mistake: they won't stop there," Wolfson said. "They'll come next for those who teach the history of slavery or who provide gender-affirming health care or who research climate change or who counsel students about their reproductive choices. We all have to draw a line together—as the old labor movement slogan says: an injury to one is an injury to all."
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