On Thursday the number of Guantanamo’s 166 prisoners now taking part in the mass hunger strike reached 102. Thirty of the detainees are being force-fed, and three are being observed in the detainee hospital.Follow RT’s day-by-day timeline of the Gitmo hunger strike.In the eleven and a half years that the prisoners have been held in the detention camp, some 90 per cent of them have not been charged with a crime. That, coupled with the fact that many of the detainees were already cleared for release but have faced stiff resistance from Congress and equivocation from the White House, has forced the prisoners to risk life and health to be heard, Worthington told RT.RT: You’ve been gathering information on the inmates – What can you tell us about the conditions for them now. Andy Worthington: Well the conditions for them are terrible in the sense that they have literally been abandoned by all three branches of the United States government. So since President Obama failed to keep his promise to close the prison within a year – that was in January 2010 – they have been unable to see any future for themselves apart from staying in Guantanamo forever. And what underpins the horror of all of this is that half of these men were cleared by an interagency task force which the president himself established. But he then imposed a ban on releasing two-thirds of them because they’re Yeminis after a failed bomb plot in Christmas 2009. And the rest of the men, in fact all of the men have had their release blocked or made extremely difficult by Congress. So it’s become a game of political football, cynically I think lawmakers are preventing prisoners from being released and the president himself has been unwilling to expend political capital on an issue that isn’t popular enough with the voters. So it’s taken the hunger strike for the prisoners to get noticed.RT: These men are now taking desperate measures, but we’ve seen hunger strikes there before. So will this one have any significant impact?AW: Well, I think it has to because it’s such a long time the prison has been open. It’s not as though anyone legitimately is claiming that there is any reason [for most of] these men to be held apart from the fact that it’s proven difficult to close the facility down and to release the majority of them. So I think the pressing question is: how is the administration going to go about particularly resolving the issue of the prisoners that its task force said the US no longer wanted to hold. Those men have to be released, and there have been good signs this week from [Attorney General] Eric Holder saying, following what President Obama said two weeks ago, that they are looking to appoint someone to oversee the Guantanamo issue and yesterday hinting that this ban on the Yeminis, which officials reinforced just a few weeks ago, by saying that maybe they are thinking of lifting the ban. They have to lift the ban. It’s absolutely critical that these 56 Yeminis are sent home.RT: And even Hillary Clinton said yesterday that the 86 who are being held without charge should be released, so in effect there could be a turn of the tide. At the same time, let’s concentrate on conditions for those prisoners at the moment, because it seems that they are getting worse and that the authorities there are really putting further pressure on them. That’s according to reports from the prisoners themselves.AW: Absolutely. I agree with all of the experts who find the force feeding of prisoners deplorable, but that said, there really is no way the United States government is going to allow prisoners to die at Guantanamo if they can help it, whether they should be allowing them to or not.RT: So what are the consequences if the prisoners die? Would that really be a turning point if that did happen? AW: Well, I think the turning point that needs to happen is the political turning point. You know, the reason the men are doing this is because they are in despair. The reason they are doing this is because half of them were told they are going home and haven’t gone anywhere. So it needs resolving on that basis. As soon as there is motion on that, I suspect that the repercussions in the prison will bring that issue down a little bit. At the moment it seems to be very much [that] the prison is a kind of terrible bubble within which the authorities have been trying to regain the upper hand over the prisoners and have resorted to isolating them, which is a terrible thing for these men who are already despairing, and having to force feed them in this manner. If the politics takes the lead, we’ll actually see some improvement.RT: If politics takes the lead and let’s say the prison is closed down, won’t we see another one opening up in its place?AW: I don’t think we’re close to seeing this one close down. We have to get the 86 cleared prisoners released. We then have 80 men left at Guantanamo. Some of these men are supposed to face trial, those of course have been very, very slow in happening and 46 of them were designated for indefinite detention without charge or trial by President Obama in an executive order two years ago. Now at the time, the only thing that made this notion even vaguely palatable to lawyers and human rights groups was that he promised there would be periodic reviews of these men’s cases to establish whether they remain a threat. Those reviews haven’t happened at all, so they need to happen, and there needs to be a genuine, objective analysis of quite how many really dangerous prisoners there are or ever have been in Guantanamo, and these people must be tried. Everything that we’ve seen over the years, and these are reports from the inside, suggest that this is no more than a few dozen of the 166 men who are still being held. … Read More
Furious Bloomberg claims NYPD is ‘under attack’ over stop-and-frisk
Stop-and-frisk was enacted in 2002, but has drawn public ire in recent months after a federal judge ruled in January that the practice of searching pedestrians without probable cause is unconstitutional.The NYPD has also been the subject of a civil lawsuit in federal court meant to determine whether patrol officers target minorities and are required to meet monthly arrest quotas. Current and former officers have testified in the affirmative to both counts.The scrutiny has apparently incensed Mayor Bloomberg, who spent almost an hour Tuesday morning assailing proponents of a bill proposed by mayoral candidate Christine Quinn that would appoint an inspector general to oversee the NYPD. Bloomberg argued the legislation is an example of “putting ideology and election-year politics in front of public safety.”“Hard to believe, but the NYPD is under attack,” Bloomberg said during the speech on the second floor of police headquarters in downtown Manhattan. “Probably because this is an election year. The attacks most often come from people who play no constructive role in keeping our city safe, but rather view their jobs as pointing fingers from the steps of City Hall.”Bloomberg’s third mayoral term comes to an end this year, but the 71-year-old billionaire is going out swinging. He’s spent months denouncing candidates who have criticized his stance on major issues, although Quinn – a former underling and City Council speaker – largely avoided his scorn before turning face on the administration’s stance on stop-and-frisk.“Some of them scream that they know better than you how to run the department,” he continued. “Some have even sued the NYPD and demanded a federal monitor over NYPD operations. They’ve also drafted politically driven legislation that is a reaction to two NYPD practices: Stop, Question and Frisk; and counter-terrorism intelligence gathering.”“Make no mistake, this is a dangerous piece of legislation and anyone who supports it is courting disaster,” Bloomberg went on. “If you end street stops looking for guns, there will be more guns on the streets, and more people will be killed. It’s that simple.” Also drawing the mayor’s contempt was the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been a Bloomberg target dating back to his initial election; and The New York Times, which has published a string of editorials scolding the stop-and-frisk policies advanced by the mayor and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.Ironically, Bloomberg levied the same critique against the Times that the NYPD is so often charged with. He accused Times editors of selecting their coverage based on race, a reference to the paper’s recent decision to ignore the shooting death of Alphonza Bryant, a black teen living in the Bronx.“Four days after Alphonza Bryant’s murder went unreported by the Times, the paper published another editorial attacking stop-question-and-frisk,” he said Tuesday. “Do you think if a white 17-year-old prep student from Manhattan was murdered, the Times would have ignored it? I think not.”Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the newspaper, told Politico Bloomberg’s assertion was “absurd.”“Mayor Bloomberg is trying to deflect criticism of the city’s stop-and-frisk practice by accusing The New York Times of bias,” Ha said. “Among those critical of the practice is The New york Times’ editorial board, which is separate from the news side of the newspaper. The Times aggressively covers violence in the city’s neighborhoods, and to select one murder as evidence to the contrary is disingenuous. His claim of racial bias is absurd.” … Read More
U.S. not ready to intervene in Syria
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House declared Thursday that U.S. intelligence indicates Syrian President Bashar Assad has twice used deadly chemical weapons in his country’s fierce civil war, a provocative action that would cross President Barack Obama’s “red line” for a significant military response. But the administration said the revelation won’t immediately change its stance on intervening.The information, which has been known to the administration and some members of Congress for weeks, isn’t solid enough to warrant quick U.S. involvement in the 2-year-old conflict, the White House said. Officials said the assessments were made with “varying degrees of confidence” given the difficulty of information gathering in Syria, though there appeared to be little question within the intelligence community.As recently as Tuesday, when an Israeli general added to the growing chorus that Assad had used chemical weapons, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration was continuing to monitor and investigate but had “not come to the conclusion that there has been that use.”Continue Reading… … Read More
New York state senator on Boston suspect: “Who wouldn’t use torture on this punk?”
New York state Sen. Greg Ball (R) took to Twitter Friday night to suggest using torture on Boston Marathon bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.The lawmaker, whose professional motto is “Gettin’ it done,” views abusive interrogation as one means of doing just that, it seems:[embedtweet id="325411515333230592"]Ball is one of several lawmakers who have come out with ethically-questionable responses to Tsarnaev’s capture.On Friday, Sen. Lindsay Graham tweeted a series of justifications for why law enforcement should not read Tsarnaev his Miranda Rights (which they didn’t, though they may eventually), and expressed a desire to hold him as an enemy combatant “for intelligence gathering purposes”:[embedtweet id="325348075197583361"]Continue Reading… … Read More
Lindsey Graham Wants a U.S. Citizen Held As an “enemy combatant for intelligence gathering purposes”
Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
became a U.S. citizen last year. Regardless, Sen. Lindsey
Graham (R-SC.) would like to see Tsarnaev captured and held “as
[an] enemy combatant for intelligence gathering
purposes.” ;
If captured, I hope Administration will at least consider
holding the Boston suspect as enemy combatant for intelligence
gathering purposes.
— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) April
19, 2013
The last thing we may want to do is read Boston suspect Miranda
Rights telling him to “remain silent.”
— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) April
19, 2013
If the #Boston suspect has ties
to overseas terror organizations he could be treasure trove
ofinformation.
— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) April
19, 2013
The Obama Administration needs to be contemplating these issues
and should not rush into a bad decision.
— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) April
19, 2013 … Read More
Google fighting back on unconstitutional National Security Letters
Court documents revealed by Bloomberg show that the company is resisting after receiving a National Security Letter (NSL), a government tactic that privacy experts say gives the federal government unprecedented intelligence gathering power.The letters, which have secretly been sent to business owners since 2000, demand that the recipient turn over transaction records, phone numbers, email addresses, and other otherwise confidential, personal information. They are often sent without explanation – and include a gag order, making it illegal for the recipient to discuss the demand in any way.One of the most important concerns levied by critics is that the NSLs are issued without a warrant and, other than a signature from a Special Agent in Charge of the given issuing FBI office, they are subject to little in the way of legal oversight.To force companies to release extensive information, the FBI only needs to prove – to itself – that the information sought is “relevant” to an investigation into nefarious intelligence activity or terrorism. NSLs did not require court approval to access a customer’s online browsing history, financial records, or any of the aforementioned information.Google’s legal challenge comes only weeks after a federal court ruled that NSLs are unconstitutional, although that ruling was given a stay of 90 days in the event of a government appeal.Fewer than ten of the 300,000 NSL recipients since 2000 have come forward, according to attorney Matt Zimmerman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet and government transparency advocacy group.“The people who are in the best position to challenge the practice are people like Google,” Zimmerman told Bloomberg.“So far no one has really stood up for their users,” he said of the other major technology companies.In early March, after negotiating with the FBI, Google tried to be more transparent about the government’s requests. In each year between 2009 and 2012 the search giant received, it says, between zero and 999 NSLs.“You’ll notice that we’re reporting numerical ranges rather than exact numbers,” Richard Salgado, a legal director for Google, wrote in a blog post. “This is to address concerns raised by the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies that releasing exact numbers might reveal information about investigations. We plan to update these figures annually.”NSLs have been a government methods of choice for decades, but saw their frequency immediately increase upon the law’s expansion with 2001’s PATRIOT Act under the George W. Bush administration.“The FBI has the authority to prohibit companies from talking about these requests,” Salgado wrote in the same blog post.“But we’ve been trying to find a way to provide more information about the NSLs we get – particularly as people have voiced concerns about the increase in their use since 9/11.” … Read More
‘Phoenix jihadist’s’ dad claims son worked for the CIA
Harroun, a 30-year-old American from Phoenix, Arizona, has been charged by the US government for conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction (namely a rocket propelled grenade launcher) to conduct an attack against the Syrian government. The US Army veteran appeared in numerous videos alongside members of the al-Nusra Front, designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization in December, but which has also been fighting alongside the Syrian opposition to take down the Assad regime. To date, 29 US-backed Syrian opposition groups have linked with al-Nusra, and have signed a petition calling for the support of the Islamist group that the White House believes is a branch of al-Qaeda.According to FBI documents, Harroun traveled to Turkey last November and joined the fight led by the Free Syrian Army shortly thereafter. His father, Darryl Harroun, on Thursday told reporters that he doesn’t understand why the US government arrested his son, who he says was working for the Central Intelligence Agency.He referred to his son as a ‘patriotic’ American who would never get involved with al-Qaeda, and claims he was gathering information for the US government.“I know he was doing some work for the CIA over there,” the man’s father said. “I know for a fact that he was passing information onto the CIA.”After seeing the documents regarding his son’s charges, Harroun told a CBS News reporter that it is all inaccurate and misleading and that the truth will eventually come out, since his son was simply gathering intelligence.“About 99 percent of that stuff that you read on there is a bunch of bull,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any truth in any of this – he’s very patriotic”The CIA is known to have contributed to the opposition fighters’ initiatives in Syria. Last week, the New York Times published an article describing how the agency has allegedly been helping foreign governments contribute to the Free Syrian Army. Unnamed US officials told the paper that the CIA has been secretly airlifting arms and other military equipment to Arab governments and Turkey, who provided them to the country’s opposition fighters.With the agency’s alleged involvement in the conflict, some believe it is very possible for the CIA to also have sent their own agents into Syria. Paul Joseph Watson suggests on InfoWars that Harroun’s arrest may have something to do with the lack of communication and rivalry between the FBI and the CIA.The FBI affidavit makes no mention of Harroun having any sort of connection to the CIA, but includes transcripts of interviews in which the man describes being treated like a prisoners in the al-Nusra camp and eventually being accepted by the members. Soon thereafter, he was helping them conduct several attacks on the Syrian regime. He also recalled being questioned about why the US government designated the group as a terrorist organization.But the FBI is worried that while he may have gone into Syria with good intentions, he may also have become radicalized. A main component of the affidavit focuses on a Facebook status Harroun allegedly posted, in which he states that “the only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.”But the man did not seem to try to hide any of his acitivities in Syria. He frequently uploaded pictures of himself in the conflict zone and made opinionated statements regarding the Assad regime. He allowed journalists to interview him over Skype and labeled himself as a “freedom fighter”, working on behalf of the opposition movement that the US supports.His alleged CIA involvement has so far only been mentioned by the man’s father, but could play a major part in the case as Harroun awaits trial. He faces a maximum of life imprisonment. … Read More
