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A project of Common Dreams

For Immediate Release
Contact: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Torture: * Prosecution * Protest

WASHINGTON

FRANCIS BOYLE
Boyle, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law in
Champaign, earlier this week submitted a complaint to the International
Criminal Court charging Bush, Cheney, et. al with crimes relating to
the "extraordinary rendition" and illegal detention of individuals.
While the U.S. is not a signatory to the ICC, Boyle notes that many
people detained by the Bush administration where detained in countries
that were signatories of the ICC at the time of detention, and thus the
Court has jurisdiction on those cases. See the complaint by Boyle to the prosecutor of the ICC, Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

MATT DALOISIO
Under the banner "Broken Promises, Broken Laws, Broken Lives," the group Witness Against Torture
is holding a series of protests today. About 40 members of the group
were arrested today inside and outside the Capitol; video is expected
shortly at the group's webpage. Daloisio is a member of the group,
which notes that tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of Obama
"signing executive orders outlawing torture and committing his
administration to closing Guantanamo within a year."
The group said today: "The United States continues to detain dozens
of men at Guantanamo who have been cleared for release. In addition,
the Obama administration is expanding the prison at Bagram [in
Afghanistan], and [is] proposing indefinite detention without charge or
trial for many and an Illinois prison facility for others. We see
President Obama trying to replace the lawlessness of Guantanamo with a
'legal black hole' in the continental United States. The laws are
broken." The group states that "the day of action follows a
twelve-day fast and vigil for justice."
Some of their protests focus on three individuals -- Salah Ahmed
Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani -- held at
Guantanamo who were reported to have committed suicide in 2006, but a
recently published investigation by Scott Horton for Harper's magazine
finds that they were likely tortured to death. See: "The Guantanamo 'Suicides': A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle."

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