by TChris

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has reinstated a lawsuit against the federal government brought by the family of John McIntyre, alleging that "the FBI contributed to McIntyre's death by giving ... two gangsters free rein to commit crimes because they were also federal informants who provided the FBI with information on the Mafia." McIntyre disappeared in 1984. His body was found in 2000.

During 1984 interviews with agents of the FBI, DEA, and Customs Service, McIntyre provided information implicating James Bulger in arms and drug smuggling operations. McIntyre disappeared six weeks later. His family suspected that Bulger played a role in the disappearance but didn't know how Bulger had learned about McIntyre's cooperation with the government. The family also wondered whether the IRA -- the recipient of Bulger's arms shipments -- had been involved with McIntyre's death.

Eventually, the Boston Globe reported that Bulger was an FBI informant and suggested that FBI agents leaked information to Bulger about informants within his criminal organization. The FBI responded that its "leadership remains outraged at the suggestion that any of its own would engage in that type of treachery." When the Globe ran stories in the mid-1990's about McIntyre's disappearance and his connection to Bulger, the government claimed it was "ludicrous" to speculate that a government agent negligently allowed McIntyre to be killed.

In fact, FBI Agent John Connolly was later convicted of revealing the identities of informants to Bulger in order to protect Bulger's ongoing criminal activities and status as a high-level FBI informant.

by TChris

A weekend survey by CNN found that only 46 percent of those surveyed approved of President Bush's job performance -- the lowest rating Bush has received in the CNN poll. Only 44 percent believe the war in Iraq was worthwhile (another low), while just 41 percent believe that Bush has been doing a good job handling the war.

Only 37 percent of those surveyed said they were satisfied with the way things are going in the United States -- a sharp drop from early January, when 55 percent said they were satisfied. Those findings had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Only 41 percent of voters said they thought Bush was doing a good job handling the economy.

Although widespread opinion that the President can't do anything right should be good news for John Kerry, the poll showed that likely voters are still about evenly split between the two candidates.

by TChris

The author of the Army report exposing abuse of Iraqi prisoners, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, will testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee tomorrow morning. In the meantime, even as President Bush reaffirms his support for Secretary of Defense Donald "See No Evil" Rumsfeld, at least one Republican lawmaker has joined Democrats in questioning whether Rumsfeld -- apologies notwithstanding -- should lose his job.

"I think it's still in question whether Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and, quite frankly, General Myers can command the respect and the trust and the confidence of the military and the American people to lead this country," said [Sen. Chuck] Hagel, a decorated Vietnam veteran.

Update: Arab commentators are predictably upset, leading Reuters to deem the images of abuse "a gift to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden." Dumping Rumsfeld would send a more effective message than the President's assurances that Americans are good people.

"After Mr. Bush's decision to keep Rumsfeld, all their apologies seem like lip service," Dubai-based political analyst Jawad al-Anani told Reuters. "Mr. Rumsfeld would have certainly lost his job if the prisoners were American."

Second update: Background on General Taguba here.

by TChris

Arrogating to themselves the power to decide that certain Iraqi prisoners deserved abuse, "U.S. military personnel singled out senior officials of Saddam Hussein's regime for special abuse in coalition prison, including solitary confinement for months on end," according to information provided to the Associated Press by a source who obtained the information from the Red Cross.

"Since June 2003 over a hundred 'high-value detainees' have been held for nearly 23 hours a day in strict solitary confinement in small concrete cells devoid of daylight," said the [Red Cross] report, which was given to coalition forces in February.

"Their continued internment several months after their arrest in strict solitary confinement constituted a serious violation of the third and fourth Geneva Conventions," said the 24-page report, confirmed by the ICRC as authentic after it was published by The Wall Street Journal Monday.

The AP learned that many of the abused detainees were included in the well-publicized "deck of cards," representing the most-wanted members of Saddam Hussein's regime. It is unclear whether Saddam Hussein has been mistreated.

by TChris

The Associated Press and The Hattiesburg American have sued the U.S. Marshals office as a result of the decision by U.S. Deputy Marshal Melanie Rube to seize and erase recordings of a speech given by recording-phobic Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. TalkLeft's coverage of the issue is here and here.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Jackson, seeks an order to prohibit the Marshals Service from seizing recording devices from reporters involved in the gathering of news. It also asks for guarantees to keep the federal agency from erasing tapes regardless of whether the seizure is lawful or not.

In essence, Luther Munford, an attorney representing the Hattiesburg American and The Associated Press, said in a prepared statement that the news organizations are seeking "a judgment that tells the U.S. Marshals Service and, in effect, other law enforcement agencies, not to do this again."

The lawsuit contends that the Marshals violated the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution, as well as the federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980. The president of Gannett Company's newspaper division, which owns the American, explains that somebody needs to police the police.

"Given the federal government's very tough stance on those who violate the law, the Marshals Service and Deputy Rube must be willing to taste their own medicine," Watson said. "An apology or a hollow commitment to study the issue will not suffice nor serve as a meaningful deterrent to prevent any repeat performances," he said.

As Associated Press assistant general counsel Dave Tomlin said: "People who enforce the law should know what the law is, and especially the basic law that says citizens can't be shaken down by their own government."

Some justice at last at the Department of Justice. It announced today it will reopen the investigation into the death of Emmett Till, a black teenager brutally killed in Mississippi.

Till was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Miss., on Aug. 28, 1955. The mutilated body of the 14-year-old from Chicago was found by fishermen three days later in the Tallahatchie River. Pictures of the slaying shocked the world. Two white men charged with murder - Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam - were acquitted by an all-white jury. Both men have since died.

Bob Dylan wrote a song about Emmett's death.

The photos we published linked to this morning from Sydney Australia IndyMedia, a site we warned readers seemed to be anti-semitic and non-neutral, apparently are phony. We are deleting them and apologize to readers who came here by accident to see them. We just logged on for the first time since noon (we are actually on the airplane flying home and this costs a fortune so we won't stay on long) and saw all the comments pointing out the pictures are not real and the source is a hate site. We didn't want to wait any longer to take them down.

Thanks to everyone for letting us know--obviously we did not know they were phony when we posted them.

by TChris

New photos of abuse inflicted on Iraqi prisoners have been acquired by Seymour Hersh at The New Yorker. The sequence of photographs, taken by two cameras over a twelve minute period, depict two German shepherds, restrained by their handlers, barking at a naked Iraqi prisoner. As the dogs pull at their leashes, the prisoner "is leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror."

In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate’s leg. Another photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood.

Hersh reports on another incident in which dogs were used to attack Iraqi citizens during a sweep in Ramadi in November.

Hersh's sources say "that many senior generals believe that, along with the civilians in Rumsfeld’s office, General Sanchez and General John Abizaid, who is in charge of the Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, had done their best to keep the issue quiet in the first months of the year." Why? Because that's the way Rumsfeld's Pentagon does business.

Secrecy and wishful thinking, the Pentagon official said, are defining characteristics of Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, and shaped its response to the reports from Abu Ghraib. “They always want to delay the release of bad news—in the hope that something good will break,” he said.

No news can be good enough to offset the bad news that continues to pour in from Iraq. Investigators are looking into CIA involvement in the death of an Iraqi prisoner; according to Hersh, "an Army intelligence operative and a judge advocate general were seeking, through their lawyers, to negotiate immunity from prosecution in return for testimony." Rapid court martials of those farthest down the chain of command won't be sufficient to make this tragedy disappear from public view.

Details of the 24 page confidential Red Cross report on Iraqi prisoner abuse are leaking out. The report says most of the abuses occurred during military interrogation and were "tantamount to torture":

The Red Cross saw American officers mistreating Abu Ghraib prisoners by keeping them naked in total darkness in empty cells, and up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake, according to a report disclosed Monday. The report by the International Committee of the Red Cross supports its allegations that abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was broad and "not individual acts" - contrary to President Bush's contention that the mistreatment "was the wrongdoing of a few."

"ICRC delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation of the persons deprived of their liberty with their interrogators," according to the confidential report. The delegates saw in October how detainees at Abu Ghraib were kept "completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness," the report said. It said it found evidence supporting prisoners' allegations of other forms of abuse during arrest, initial detention and interrogation. Among the evidence were burns, bruises and other injuries consistent with the abuse that prisoners alleged, it said.

Among the acts considered to be torture are "brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution."

The ICRC has issued a press release on the premature release of its 24 page confidential report on the coalition forces’ treatment of persons held in Iraq:

Geneva (ICRC) – The Wall Street Journal of 7 May has published extensive excerpts from a confidential document entitled "Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment and Interrogation" of January 2004. "I am profoundly disturbed that the report was made available for publication without the consent of the ICRC." declared ICRC president Jakob Kellenberger. "The ICRC fulfils its mandate to protect persons detained in armed conflict by addressing problems and violations through private approaches to the detaining authorities and their superiors. This long-standing practice allows us to act in a decisive manner, while ensuring that our delegates have continued access to detainees around the world."

The ICRC has visited persons held by the coalition forces and submitted its confidential reports to the authorities responsible on the basis of its mandate under the Geneva Conventions. This report summarizes a series of working papers handed over to coalition forces. ICRC delegates’ findings were based on their observations and on private interviews with prisoners of war and civilian internees during the 29 visits the ICRC conducted in 14 places of detention throughout Iraq between 31 March and 24 October 2003.

by TChris

Tempering justice with mercy is one of the most difficult tasks of the criminal justice system -- almost as difficult as deciding what constitutes "justice" in the first place.

Robert Latimer, a Saskatchewan farmer, killed his daughter in 1993. He says he did it to spare her from unbearable suffering.

At trial, Tracy's pediatric orthopedic surgeon testified that the tiny girl, contorted by cerebral palsy, would likely face "incredible" pain after surgery to ease a permanently dislocated hip. The procedure involved removing part of her upper leg to create a "flail limb" that would no longer be connected by bone.

Both the surgeon and a family doctor had told the Latimers that Tylenol was the only painkiller Tracy could have after her release from hospital. Anything stronger could have shut down her fragile respiratory system, Mr. Latimer said.

Knowing that his daughter would eventually need the same surgery on her other hip, Latimer couldn't bear to see his daughter suffer. A jury found him guilty of second-degree murder but recommended that he serve only one year in jail and another under house arrest at his farm. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Latimer would have to serve the ten year mandatory minimum sentence for the crime.

Latimer, who has served more than three years, hasn't yet applied for clemency because he thinks the Supreme Court misspoke when it said he could have controlled his daughter's pain with more effective medications. He worries that the misunderstanding needs to be resolved before his clemency petition will be taken seriously. That's unfortunate, because Latimer is a perfect candidate for clemency. Whether his actions are viewed as morally right or wrong, it's obvious that Latimer poses no risk to others. The unique and tragic circumstances of his case make the sentence proposed by the jury a more just outcome than continued incarceration.

Shades of the Roman Colliseum and gladiators? The first court martial trial of a U.S. soldier charged with abusing Iraqi prisoners will be that of Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits of Hyndman, Pa., who served as part of the now infamous 372nd Military Police Company. The trial will take place May 19 at the Baghdad Convention Center and will be open to the public and the media.

Has Sivits met with a lawyer yet? How can a lawyer prepare for such a complex trial involving the military, the intelligence agency and private contractors on ten days notice? Oh, we get it. That's enough time for the prosecution to parade the soldier's action before the world but not enough time to compel the Government to furnish the defense with sufficient detail about the chain of command to allow it to prepare a credible defense that the soldier's actions were condoned or initiated at the behest of higher-ups , whether they be intelligence officers by or private contractors.

Sounds to us like this young man is being fed to the lions. We're not in any sense condoning his actions, whatever they might have been...we assume the Government chose his case first because it was the easiest for them to prove....but we do object to him being held out as a sacrificial lamb to show the world the U.S. will punish these offenders to the fullest extent possible if at the same time it precludes an investigation and airing of the higher-ups along the chain of command.

[comments open again--our new close comments script seems to prevent old comments from being showed. Until it's fixed, we're re-opening the comments on this thread. But please try to stay on topic]