US plans death camp

26May03

THE US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber.

Prisoners would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal, The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported yesterday.
The plans were revealed by Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who is in charge of 680 suspects from 43 countries, including two Australians.

The suspects have been held at Camp Delta on Cuba without charge for 18 months.

General Miller said building a death row was one plan. Another was to have a permanent jail, with possibly an execution chamber.

The Mail on Sunday reported the move is seen as logical by the US, which has been attacked worldwide for breaching the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war since it established the camp at a naval base to hold alleged terrorists from Afghanistan.

But it has horrified human rights groups and lawyers representing detainees.

They see it as the clearest indication America has no intention of falling in line with internationally recognised justice.

The US has already said detainees would be tried by tribunals, without juries or appeals to a higher court. Detainees will be allowed only US lawyers.

British activist Stephen Jakobi, of Fair Trials Abroad, said: “The US is kicking and screaming against any pressure to conform with British or any other kind of international justice.”

American law professor Jonathan Turley, who has led US civil rights group protests against the military tribunals planned to hear cases at Guantanamo Bay, said: “It is not surprising the authorities are building a death row because they have said they plan to try capital cases before these tribunals.

“This camp was created to execute people. The administration has no interest in long-term prison sentences for people it regards as hard-core terrorists.”

Britain admitted it had been kept in the dark about the plans.

A Downing St spokesman said: “The US Government is well aware of the British Government’s position on the death penalty.”

This report appears on news.com.au.

#77461 by richard young on 6/12 at 5:37 pm
(Unregistered commenter)

Why does Ms. Mariner assume that the two young children of Khalid Sheik Mohammed are no longer in CIA detention? (Please GOOGLE “CIA holds two Pakistani boys” for immediate access to the original 2003 London Telegraph story on this still-suppressed kidnapping by our Government.) Under the criteria supposedly followed by Ms. Mariner’s organization, there is no factual basis for taking these two children off the “forced disappearance” list. Unless Ms. Mariner has facts about the subsequent release of these children which she is not revealing, these two children are presumably still in CIA custody. It seems that Human Rights Watch is asleep on the job.

The difference between Ms. Mariner and you is that she isn’t relying upon or seeking “presumably”.  She is seeking _fact_.

She isn’t seeking presumption as to where they _were_; she is asking, “Where are they _NOW_?”

If the this article doesnt force you to stop and think that it might be remotely possible that a government capable of doing this would never demolish its own buildings, nothing will.

Hopefully as more people become informed, we can demand answers to our questions about 9/11, and force a change in our government.

brandon
http://www.actforyourself.org

FROM THE ARTICLE:
“How would we feel if it were done to an American?” asks Tom Malinowski of the Human Rights Watch Washington office.
_____________________________________________________
If I’m not mistaken, there are a few Americans.  Unfortunately, they are relying on our inherent racism and cultural chauvinism toward ethnic / religious minorities and succeeding.
“They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
—Martin Niemöller

Thank you, Marie.  Good post.  Keep it up.

Sorry, on my last post, I hit the submit instead of the preview button, so you got my draft, but you should still get the idea of what was to be.  You can always ask.

Seems Bush learned something from his history classes.  Congress is supposed to writethe lawsm so how can this be happening here? 

Let’s see now, we have the kidnapping and disappearance of political activists.  No, they are terriosts, so that is not the same.

“Nacht und Nebel (German for “Night and Fog”) was a directive (German: Erlass) of Adolf Hitler on December 7, 1941 signed and implemented by Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Wilhelm Keitel, resulting in kidnapping and disappearance of many political activists throughout Nazi Germany’s occupied territories.”

Do we belive in following the Geneva Convention? It seems Bush said something about that. 

“Up until the time of the “Night and Fog” decree, prisoners from Western Europe were handled by German soldiers in approximately the same way other countries did: according to national agreements and procedures such as the Geneva Convention. Hitler and his upper level staff, however, made a critical decision not to have to conform to what they considered unnecessary rules. The Third Reich, after all, was not a party to the Geneva Convention, and so observed it only as needed to reduce tensions with other nations.”

Is it only mem are we in a time warp?

It is time we pulled our heads out of our collective anal orfice and realize that we are not the annoited saviors of the world that we have always portrayed ourselves to be.  Our leaders, no matter how many times they claim to have been “born again”, are cut from the same cloth as all the other petty dictaters of the world.  The difference in the past was that the constitution restricted how much they could get away with.  Now that we have stood by and watched this particularly manipulative gang of thieves take it apart a piece at a time, its a little late to claim surprise and alarm.  Our inaction has brought this on ourselves and the longer we remain passive, the worse it will get and the more freedom we will lose.  We have become a second class nation with “C student” leaders.

I well remember the rumors during the Vietnam war of political prisons in the USA. If we dared to talk of such atrocities we were branded conspiracy nuts. Did they exist than, who knows for sure? Based on today’s knowledge I would place my bet on Yes, they did exist. Life in Amerika is now at the cheapest price I have ever seen in my many years. The past five administrations have made this country so dispassionate and cruel that we are hard pressed to find fault with other countries.
The college of the America’s is a lesson for us all, it is there that torture is taught with other human degradations. Not a pretty picture of a country that was the leader in compassion and champion of human dignity.

As the Israelis have become the Nazis of WWII, we have become the tyrants we fought.

A very famous newspaper comic strip called Pogo said, “We have identified the enemy and they is us!”  This was over 60 years ago. 

I left America more than 4 years ago…I saw the writing on the wall…it brings tears to my eyes, but I’ll be damned if I’ll be a victim of this fascist administration. 

America, it’s time to wake up!  There is no knight in shining armour or god directed savior.

America, it’s time to grow up!!!