"Hundreds of years of what constituted the rule of law have been jettisoned so that Howard, Ruddock and Downer can pretend that Hicks is off their election agenda. Forget habeas corpus. Forget retrospective legislation. Forget coerced evidence and confessions. Forget commissions in which guilt has been predetermined. Forget prosecutors being judges in their own cause."
The words could not be more condemning. Robert Richter QC, one of Australia's leading criminal counsel, writing in The Sunday Age, casts more than a critical eye over the whole Hicks "affair" - and concludes it has all too many overtones of and familiarities to what we saw during the Stalin era.
And how coincidental that the NY Times reports today:
"A prisoner at Guantanamo Bay said he confessed to terrorist attacks and plots because he had been tortured, according to a transcript of a March 14 hearing released by the Pentagon.
Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri is accused of planning the attack on the US destroyer Cole off Yemen in 2000 and playing a role in the bombings of two US embassies in Africa in 1998.
The US Government deleted all parts of the transcript in which Nashiri described the alleged torture."
And the Washington Post details the same allegations im greater detail, here, and makes reference to this:
"It has long been publicly known that the CIA used controversial interrogation techniques that went beyond those used by the military after the Sept. 11 attacks, including waterboarding (which simulates the sensation of drowning), exposure to extreme temperatures and prolonged forced standing. Detainees who think they have been in secret CIA detention facilities have reported serious abuse there.
John Sifton, a senior terrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch, decried the secrecy and said there is ample evidence that the CIA has used illegal tactics on detainees and is trying to hide it.
"It's a bit disingenuous for the CIA to refer allegations to the inspector general" after the agency itself approved questionable techniques, he said."
The words could not be more condemning. Robert Richter QC, one of Australia's leading criminal counsel, writing in The Sunday Age, casts more than a critical eye over the whole Hicks "affair" - and concludes it has all too many overtones of and familiarities to what we saw during the Stalin era.
And how coincidental that the NY Times reports today:
"A prisoner at Guantanamo Bay said he confessed to terrorist attacks and plots because he had been tortured, according to a transcript of a March 14 hearing released by the Pentagon.
Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri is accused of planning the attack on the US destroyer Cole off Yemen in 2000 and playing a role in the bombings of two US embassies in Africa in 1998.
The US Government deleted all parts of the transcript in which Nashiri described the alleged torture."
And the Washington Post details the same allegations im greater detail, here, and makes reference to this:
"It has long been publicly known that the CIA used controversial interrogation techniques that went beyond those used by the military after the Sept. 11 attacks, including waterboarding (which simulates the sensation of drowning), exposure to extreme temperatures and prolonged forced standing. Detainees who think they have been in secret CIA detention facilities have reported serious abuse there.
John Sifton, a senior terrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch, decried the secrecy and said there is ample evidence that the CIA has used illegal tactics on detainees and is trying to hide it.
"It's a bit disingenuous for the CIA to refer allegations to the inspector general" after the agency itself approved questionable techniques, he said."
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