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For Immediate Release
April, 25 2011, 05:07pm EDT
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
WikiLeaks and Torture
Numerous media outlets -- including McClatchy, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Times and NPR -- are now releasing information from classified files originally obtained via WikiLeaks on more than 700 past and present Guantanamo detainees.
WASHINGTON
Numerous media outlets -- including McClatchy, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Times and NPR -- are now releasing information from classified files originally obtained via WikiLeaks on more than 700 past and present Guantanamo detainees.
LOGAN PRICE, logan -- at -- bradleymanning.org, @kstrel, bradleymanning.org
Late last week, Price questioned President Obama at a fundraiser about the detention of Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, including the documents on Guantanamo now being released. See Glenn Greenwald: "President Obama speaks on Manning and the rule of law"
Obama told Price: "We're a nation of laws. We don't let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He [Manning] broke the law." Wrote Greenwald: "How can Manning possibly expect to receive a fair hearing from military officers when their Commander-in-Chief has already decreed his guilt? ... But even more fascinating is Obama's invocation of America's status as a 'nation of laws' to justify why Manning must be punished. That would be a very moving homage to the sanctity of the rule of law -- if not for the fact that the person invoking it is the same one who has repeatedly engaged in the most extraordinary efforts to shield Bush officials from judicial scrutiny, investigation, and prosecution of every kind for their war crimes and surveillance felonies." Price asked if what Manning did wasn't comparable to what Daniel Ellsberg did in leaking the Pentagon Papers. Greenwald added: "Obama's claim that 'Ellsberg's material wasn't classified in the same way' is true -- what Ellsberg released was TOP SECRET [while the WikiLeaks material is merely secret]."
ANDY WORTHINGTON, andy -- at -- andyworthington.co.uk
Worthington is author of The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison. He is co-director of the film "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo." youtube.com
Worthington was on Democracy Now this morning about the most recent revelations.
PRATAP CHATTERJEE, pchatterjee -- at -- igc.org
Chatterjee is a regular columnist for the British Guardian, and just wrote the piece "How Guantanamo Bay became Kafkas's trial."
MATTHEW DALOISIO, daloisio -- at -- riseup.net
Daloisio is with Witness Against Torture. He said today: "What we have suspected for a long time now has been confirmed by the latest WikLleaks documents released today. Guantanamo represents a full systems failure that spans two administrations, and indicts every branch of government. If there is any hope, it must be found in a time-tested system of law instead of fear-fueled politics that has led the Congress, the White House and the Judiciary to imprison innocent men, justify cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and fail at holding anyone accountable."
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
LATEST NEWS
Top UNICEF Official Says Gaza Children 'Being Starved' by Israel
"This simply should not be happening. The children I met are not victims of a natural disaster."
Aug 02, 2025
The deputy director of UNICEF returned from his most recent trip to the Gaza Strip this week and has issued a fresh warning to the world that immediate and forceful action must be taken to end the suffering that is being imposed by Israel on the children who live in the war-torn enclave that now teeters on the edge of full-blown famine as bombs continue to be dropped, nowhere is safe, and kids are dying at a rate of more than two dozen every single day.
UNICEF deputy director Ted Chaiban said in a Friday statement that he had just completed his fourth in-person visit to Gaza since the war that began "after the horrors of October 7th," but that there was no preparing for what he witnessed in recent days.
"You see the images on the news, and you know what has happened, but it is still shocking when you are there," he said. "The marks of deep suffering and hunger were visible on the faces of families and children. Over 18,000 children have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war. That's an average of 28 children a day, the size of a classroom, gone. Children have lost loved ones, they are hungry and scared, and they are traumatized."
Calling the conditions that Israel has created on the ground in Gaza "inhumane," Mr. Chaiban demanded a sustained ceasefire and a political way forward. He also detailed how the United Nations has now identified two indicators showing that Gaza has "exceeded the famine threshold," and that the occupied territory "faces grave risk of famine" due to the ongoing Israeli blockade that prevents humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians, even as the number of documented deaths from acute starvation continue to mount and the killings of people trying to reach aid distribution points continues to climb.
"This simply should not be happening. The children I met are not victims of a natural disaster," Chaiban said Friday of the young Palestinians, critically malnourished, he met during his visit to Gaza in the preceding days. "They are being starved, bombed, and displaced."
Aid organizations as well as Palestinians living in Gaza are describing horrific scenes as the famine conditions grip the population and the suffering of children escalates from a situation that has been described as "hell on earth" for well over a year.
"All my children have lost nearly half of their body weight," Jamil Mughari, a 38-year-old from Maghazi in central Gaza, told the Guardian in an interview published Saturday. "My daughter, who is five years old, now weighs only 11kg. My son Mohammad has become just skin and bones. All my children are like this."
"I myself used to weigh 85kg," Mughari explained, "and now I'm down to 55."
Rejecting the misguided suggestion that airdrops should be part of the solution to the starvation crisis in Gaza, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said Friday that a large number of trucks, alongside the return of experts in the distribution of humanitarian aid, is the best solution.
"As the people of Gaza are starving to death, the only way to respond to the famine is to flood Gaza with assistance," said Lazzarini. "UNRWA, the largest UN agency on the ground, has 6,000 trucks loaded with aid stuck outside Gaza waiting for the green light to enter."
While UNICEF is helping some limited aid reach people in need, Chaiban said the trickle allowed by Israel is nowhere close to what's needed to save lives and that efforts to change the policies have been rebuffed, even as "children are dying at an unprecedented rate" with no end in sight.
"We are at a crossroads," he said, after calling for the entry of at least 500 trucks per day to deliver life-saving supplies. "The choices made now will determine whether tens of thousands of children live or die. We know what must be done and what can be done."
Amidst the carnage and growing global outrage over Israel's genoce in Gaza, critics of the U.S. backing of the underlying policies continue to acknowledge and decry the shameful complicity of the Trump administration, members of Congress, and influential media outlets who offer material support and political cover to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"The debate over whether or not Gaza is a genocide is, effectively, over. So can we now also stop pretending that we are mere bystanders to this genocide? That our sin is one only of omission rather than commission?" asked Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan in a Guardian op-ed on Saturday.
"The inconvenient truth is that the U.S. has not just looked the other way, as tens of thousands of Palestinians have been besieged and bombed, starved and slaughtered, but helped Israel pull the trigger," argued Hasan. "We have been complicit in this genocide, which is itself a crime under article III of the Genocide convention."
On Friday, as Common Dreams reported, Human Rights Watch issued a new report on the starvation in Gaza and said it was "indefensible" for the U.S. government to continue its backing of Israel.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who led another failed effort this week in the U.S. Senate to block further military support of Israel, struck a similiar tone in the Boston Globe on Friday when he wrote that most Americans, according to recent polling, oppose what's taking place in Gaza.
"At a time when Israeli soldiers are routinely shooting civilians trying to get food, when Gaza faces mass starvation, and when extremist settlers terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank, the United States should not provide more weapons to enable these atrocities," Sanders wrote.
"Americans want this to end. They do not want to be complicit in an unfolding famine and daily massacres. Congress has the power to act—to use our leverage of billions in military aid to demand Israel end this slaughter," he added. "History will condemn those who fail to do so."
Sparing neither the current nor former U.S. administrations in his remarks, Hasan said that the history books will remember where people stood and when.
"To the Biden and Trump administrations, to Democrats and Republicans in Congress, to the US media, I say this: history will judge you," Hasan wrote. "For the bombs you sent, the votes you cast, the lies you told. This will be your shameful legacy when the dust finally settles in Gaza, when all of the bodies have been pulled from the rubble. Not defending your ally or fighting terrorism, but non-stop complicity in a genocide; aiding and abetting the crime of crimes."
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'Authoritarian Horrors' of Trump Dealt Blow by Federal Appeals Court
The 9th Circuit upholds lower court ruling against ICE raids denounced as 'unconstitutional' by legal plaintiffs in California.
Aug 02, 2025
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit late Friday backed a lower court ruling which found immigration raids targeting people based on their apparent racial identity, language spoken, or vicinity of their capture are unlawful—a decision which dealt a further blow to President Donald Trump's authoritarian policies aimed at migrant workers and working-class communities in California and beyond.
In its ruling, the 3-judge panel of the federal court upheld a previous ruling by a U.S. District Court in early July which found the targeting of migrants during the raids was based not on suspicion of wrongdoing or criminal activity of any kind, but simply for speaking Spanish, appearing to be a certain ethnicity, or being near a location where certain workers tend to congregate, such as a bus stop, large hardware store, or agriculture site.
The ruling stems from a case brought against the Trump administration by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, Public Counsel, workers, and others who argue the raids, which have touched off community anger and unease for months, are, in the words of Public Counsel's senior attorney Mark Rosenbaum, "unconstitutional, unsupported by evidence, and rooted in fear and harmful stereotypes, not public safety."
The 9th Circuit ruling means the lower court's ban on such raids in certain areas of southern California will remain in place while the case proceeds.
"Every person, regardless of immigration status, has the right to live, work, and belong in their community without being hunted, harassed, or locked away." —Lindsay Toczylowski, Immigrant Defenders Law Center
As the New York Times notes, the latest ruling leaves the Trump administration with two legal options. "It can ask all the active Ninth Circuit judges to reconsider the panel’s Friday night decision," the newspaper notes, "or it could ask the Supreme Court to issue a stay of [the lower court order issued on July 7.]"
In the meantime—though the legal battle is far from over—the plaintiffs in the case celebrated the ruling and vowed to continue their fight against Trump's far-right, anti-immigrant agenda.
"This decision is further confirmation that the administration's paramilitary invasion of Los Angeles violated the Constitution and caused irreparable injury across the region," said Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. "We look forward to holding the federal government accountable for these authoritarian horrors it unleashed in Southern California, and we invite every person of conscience to join us in defending the integrity and freedom of communities of color across the country."
Lindsay Toczylowski, president and CEO of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, another party to the suit, also heralded the ruling.
"This decision reaffirms that nobody is above the law—not even the federal government," said Toczylowski. "Southern California was never going to back down in the face of lawless attacks on our immigrant communities. Every person, regardless of immigration status, has the right to live, work, and belong in their community without being hunted, harassed, or locked away. While we celebrate this hard-fought victory, we remain relentless in protecting our clients in the courtroom and beyond."
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In Boost to 'Dictator' Bukele, El Salvador Abolishes Presidential Term Limits
"But you won't see Marco Rubio or Donald Trump calling him a dictator, as they do with Maduro," one critic said of the Salvadoran president.
Aug 01, 2025
El Salvador's Legislative Assembly—which is controlled by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's New Ideas party—on Thursday approved a series of constitutional reforms, including abolition of presidential term limits, that critics warned pose a grave threat to the Central American nation's fragile democracy.
As El Faro reported, lawmakers approved measures allowing for indefinite presidential terms, expanding the current five-year presidential terms to six years, eliminating the second round of presidential elections, and advancing the end of Bukele's term from 2029 to 2027 in order to synchronize presidential, legislative, and municipal elections.
New Ideas Congresswoman Ana Figueroa, who proposed the reforms, argues that if other elected offices in El Salvador do not have term limits, why should the presidency?
"This is quite simple, Salvadoran people. Only you will be able to decide how long you support your president," Figueroa said Thursday.
Congressional Vice President Suecy Callejas, also of New Ideas, contended that "power has returned to the only place to which it truly belongs... to the Salvadoran people."
However, opposition lawmakers, journalists, human rights defenders, and others condemned the measures, which come amid an ongoing "state of emergency" that, while dramatically reducing crime in what was once the world's murder capital, has seen widespread repression of human and civil rights.
"Democracy has died in El Salvador today," said Congresswoman Marcela Villatoro of the opposition ARENA party, who argued that the reforms were "approved without consultation, in a gross and cynical way."
Thiago Süssekind, a Brazilian scholar and professor at the University of Oxford in England, called the reforms' passage "the moment when El Salvador buried its democracy."
"Nayib Bukele—the darling dictator of the Latin right—can now govern forever," Süssekind added. "The discourse, paradoxically, is about democracy—deliberately conflating it with the will of the majority."
Chilean pollster Marta Lagos argued on social media that El Salvador is being transformed into "an electoral dictatorship" that "excludes an essential element of democracy: respect for minorities, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and civic and political freedoms."
Lagos noted "the detention of thousands of people without due process," an apparent reference to prisons including the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, where the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump—an erstwhile critic-turned-ally of Bukele—is sending deported migrants, including innocent people, to face abusive and sometimes deadly imprisonment.
Juanita Goebertus, director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), argued that New Ideas is "following the same path as Venezuela."
HRW and other human rights groups accuse the United Socialist Party government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of grave human rights and electoral abuses, and many leftists in Venezuela and beyond feel the Bolivarian Revolution launched under former President Hugo Chávez has been betrayed.
"It starts with a leader who uses their popularity to concentrate power, and ends in dictatorship," Goebertus warned.
Like Trump, Bukele has shrugged off—and at times even embraced—the "dictator" label. He once called himself the "coolest dictator in the world."
Trump—who has himself flirted with the concept of being president for life, or at least for a third term—has remained silent about Bukele's democratic backsliding, even as his administration imposes staggering tariffs on Brazil and punitive sanctions on a leading member of its judiciary for defending democracy.
Plaudits for Bukele, Magnitsky sanctions for de Moraes. The Rubio way.
[image or embed]
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) July 30, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Such actions, along with the Trump administration's record of targeting certain authoritarian governments while courting and coddling others, drew stinging rebuke by social media users in El Salvador and beyond.
Comments from Latin American X users included:
- "Spending 20 years calling Hugo Chávez a dictator over the issue of indefinite reelection only to end up applauding Bukele for doing the same and calling him a democrat. They're so adorable!!!" -@ArondonFT
- "They criticize Venezuela and Cuba, but support the dictator Bukele? Hypocrisy disguised as democracy." -@zandrusky
- "To me, 'indefinite presidential reelection' sounds like a dictatorship, but since it's Bukele and not Maduro, I guess it's no big deal and just my imagination." -@BenderOfuscando
- "Bukele perpetuates himself in power, but the right will not call him a dictator as it does with Maduro. And El Salvador will not receive sanctions from the U.S., as Venezuela does. The right and the U.S. do not care that Bukele is a dictator, as long as he is one of theirs." -@andres20ad
Thursday's reforms—which must still be ratified by lawmakers—mark the second major modification of presidential term limits in El Salvador. Although the country's constitution prohibits presidential reelection, New Ideas purged the constitutional court's judges and replaced them with ones loyal to Bukele. The court subsequently ruled Bukele was eligible to run again, and he won last year's election in a landslide.
Bukele wasn't always so keen on presidential reelection. In a 2013 interview, he said that "in El Salvador, a president cannot be reelected."
"This is to ensure that he... doesn't use his power to remain in power," Bukele added.
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