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Ghost Prisons and Ghost Courtrooms

Village Voice reports on those "secret" prisons around the world:

"On September 17, 2001, the president told the National Security Council that, at the advice of then CIA director George Tenet (who was later awarded the Medal of Freedom by the president) he was going to issue a classified Memorandum of Notification that would give the CIA permission to use "special authorities to detain Al Qaeda operatives worldwide."

Without consulting Congress or any court, Bush had given the CIA the power to ignore American laws and our international treaty obligations to—among other war crimes under the Geneva Conventions—create its own secret prisons around the world. The CIA could also continue to conduct "renditions" to kidnap terrorism suspects to be interrogated in countries known for torturing their prisoners."

And interesting to reflect on:

"You need to have a president who understands you can't win this war with legal papers. We've got to use every tool at our disposal."
George W. Bush, Nightline, May 13, 2004

"What are we going to do with these people when we're finished . . . with them? Are they going to disappear?"
Jack Cloonan, senior FBI agent on the Bin Laden Squad, speaking of the terrorism suspects hidden in CIA secret cells, Nightline, May 13, 2004

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [resisting interrogation in a CIA secret prison] was strapped down, forcibly pushed under the water, and made to believe he might drown."
The New York Times, May 13, 2004

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