Can We Turn Hate Into Reason?

By William Fisher

I’ve been racking my brain to find something – anything -- good to say about the US-made pathologically Islamophobic film that has triggered the deadly riots now creating bloodshed across the Muslim world.

My conclusion: There is nothing good to say about this film.

Is there anything at all to salvage from the dangerous contretemps is has caused?

Well, maybe.

If Egyptian Muslims – and all Muslims – could come to understand two things: The US government had nothing to do with this film at any point – the US Government doesn’t make films attacking – or praising – particular religions. In America, it’s known as the Separation Between Church and State. And it is a cornerstone of our Bill of Rights.

The second thing angry Muslims need to understand is much harder because it runs counter to so much of Arab culture. It is a quote usually attributed to Voltaire. It says: “I disagree with what you have to say but will fight to the death to protect your right to say it."

“Protect your right to say it” – this is the essence of free speech. At the risk of restating the obvious, this is the free speech that Muslim and Arab revolutionaries throughout the Middle East have only so recently won.
Yet it would be unreasonable of us to suggest that “protect your right to say it” is a construct about which Middle Eastern peoples know anything at all. In fact, it is totally alien to them. And, quite likely, rejected out of hand.

Whether this thought will ever find a home in the majority of Arab minds is a work in progress. Today there are literally thousands of Arab and Muslim intellectuals who are totally comfortable with Voltaire’s words – who live his aspirations every day of their lives.

It is going to be largely up to these men and women to adopt this cornerstone of free speech. It’s difficult to see how George W. Bush’s “Democracy-Building” programs could make a substantial contribution.

But whoever works at it can be certain that it won’t happen quickly and without pain.

Not for the Faint-Hearted

Here are two stories you're not like to see very often in the mainstream press. Why, you ask? Well, for openers, they're not feelgood stories. One is about a mentally ill prison inmate who gets bounced about from one solitary confinement to another. And who never should have been in the slammer in the first place. The second is about another mental illness victim who ended up in solitary in the place that's become a sad substitute for a mental hospital.

Secondly, these are not the kind of stories one finds easily on the web, unless you're looking for specialized or highly technical subject matter. Third, most mainstream reporters hate jailhouse reporting. You usually have to travel a good bit before they get to the slammer. Then, there's all that paperwork to verify that they are who you say they are. And then there's a search. And when you're done, you start at the end and work forward until you're out.

Finally, there are a few reporters who've made jailhouse reporting sexy. Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who exposed the CIA black site secret prisons, and Nina Bernstein of the New York Times,who wrote about the deaths and cover-up of undocumented workers while they waited in detention facilities before being deported by ICE.

So here, for those who yearn for a Fourth Estate that is mostly dead, are a couple of stories.

Pennsylvania inmate Derrick Stanley has been released from prison after over 22 years of incarceration, more than half of which was served in solitary confinement. Stanley was among six inmates in State Correctional Institution-Dallas’s Restricted Housing Unit (RHU) charged with rioting after a peaceful protest against mistreatment of another inmate in April 2010.

Stanley, who represented himself in court, was granted his habeus corpus petition by the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas on December 30th, 2011, after a judge dismissed the riot charge against Stanley. According to the Human Rights Coalition, the judge ruled that the circumstances surrounding the riot charge would “lead to ‘absurd’ charges of riot in the future.” Stanley maxed out of his underlying criminal conviction for armed robbery on February 7th, and agreed to be interviewed by Solitary Watch.

The riot charge stemmed from an April 29th incident in which Stanley and five other inmates, who collectively would be referred to as the Dallas 6, obstructed their cell door windows in protest of the withholding of food from and violent cell extractions of two other inmates. All six were subject to cell extractions over the course of two-three hours. Stanley was the fifth to be extracted, which was done by approximately half a dozen officers, who tasered and beat him before stripping him naked and keeping him restrained in a “hard cell” for 24 hours before being transferred to SCI-Mahanoy, where he would spent over a year in solitary confinement.
Read the whole piece: http://solitarywatch.com/tag/derrick-stanley/

Criminalizing Mental Illness: The Story of Adam Hall

When he was five years old, Adam Hall tried to burn down his family home outside Utica in upstate New York. Afterwards, he drew a picture of his family having a happy reunion in heaven. Adam’s mother, Carole Hall, knew the incident was a cry for help–and possibly an early suicide attempt–but she had no money to get Adam decent treatment. Through the rest of his childhood, the boy would be in and out of psychiatric institutions and group homes. Carole Hall says he was molested in two of them, but never effectively treated for what would eventually be diagnosed as a panoply of mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder.

What happened next is all too typical of what happens to young people with untreated psychiatric disabilities in New York and throughout the United States, in an era when psychiatric hospitals have closed and jails and prisons have become the default inpatient facilities for the nation’s mentally ill. Adam Hall ended up in prison for a relatively minor felony, then in solitary confinement. Before long, he would have years added to his sentence for offenses committed in prison–offenses once again stemming from his mental illness. If the pattern continues, he could end up spending decades behind bars.
Hall’s erratic and sometimes violent behavior got him in trouble with the law while he was still a teenager. By the time he was 22, in 2009, he had been convicted of assault after stealing a car and resisting arrest. Sentenced to three years, he joined the estimated 5,000 or more prisoners in New York State’s prison who are suffering from mental illness.

According to correspondence with Adam Hall and interviews with his mother, he bounced around the prison system for a while. And like many people with mental illness, he quickly got in trouble for breaking prison rules and was disciplined by being placed in lockdown. A 2003 report by New York’s Correctional Association found that while inmates diagnosed with mental illness made up 11 percent of the state’s overall prison population, they constituted nearly a quarter of the inmates in isolated confinement in the state’s Special Housing Units (SHUs). Many of the SHU prisoners the CA interviewed for the report were “actively psychotic, manic, paranoid or seemingly overmedicated.”

Eventually Hall landed in the Residential Mental Health Unit (RMHU) at Marcy State Correctional Facility. The RMHU is considered an alternative to long-term solitary confinement for difficult to control prisoners with mental illness. In these units, inmates are locked down for much of the day, but receive they a greater measure of out-of-cell time and mental health treatment. Recent litigation and 2008’s so-called SHU Exclusion Law were designed to reduce the population of mentally ill inmates in solitary, in part by increasing the number of RMHU beds. And considering the alternatives, it was probably the best placement available to Adam Hall within the prison system.

But Adam Hall remained unstable and suicidal, and in 2011 he attempted to kill himself the same way he had when he was five: he set fire to his RMHU cell. Prison officials had the option to treat the incident as a symptom of Hall’s mental illness, and address it through internal disciplinary and classification processes. Instead, they chose to send Hall’s case to a grand jury in Utica, where he was indicted for arson. Facing up to 25 years, Hall let his public defender enter a guilty plea to third-degree arson, and was sentenced to three to six additional years in prison.

Hall was shipped to another RMHU, this one in Attica, where he remains today. The Department of Corrections has charged him for damages to his cell totaling more than $4,000, which he cannot pay. Because of his debts to the prison, his mother says, any money sent to him to buy food and sundries from the canteen is requisitioned by the state. Adam says he has to sell his prison food to get enough to buy postage stamps.
Adam’s situation–spelled out in a rap sheet he sent to Solitary Watch along with health records provided by his mother–appears to fly in the face of the intent of the state’s hard-won SHU exclusion law. The law is designed to protect and help mentally ill inmates who face prison disciplinary proceedings. But it leaves prison officials the option to deal with behavior problems as crimes rather than as mental health issues, and ship them out to the local DA. (Some laws, in fact, appear to have been passed for this express purpose. It is now a felony in New York, for example, to throw feces at a prison officer–and offense that is committed almost exclusively by mentally ill inmates in the SHU, as well as those driven mad by solitary.)
“The part that bothers me,’’ said one attorney with experience representing prisoners, “is: why did DOCCS refer this particular case to the DA for outside prosecution? We don’t have a lot of info, but it appears that if he did have a discipline hearing for this incident it was dismissed, and it may have been dismissed because of his mental health. That they would refer for outside prosecution a case that does not even warrant internal discipline is quite troubling. However, I know of no law that applies. As far as I know, DOCCS simply has discretion to refer cases to local DAs.”

Another attorney who defends prisoners’ rights confirmed that “many disciplinary tickets are written for incidents that could be charged as crimes. If the DOCCS determines to handle it through the prison system, then there is no criminal case. DOCCS does call in the DA for some incidents–this is a discretionary decision.” Under the SHU exclusion law, if the incident is dealt with inside the prison system, “New York State regulations “require that mental health is taken into consideration for the purpose of mitigation and possible dismissal of infractions under certain circumstances. Those regulations are pretty much going to be in effect for anyone who is in an RMHU–meaning that for all disciplinary hearings arising out of incidents in an RMHU, it is likely that the regulations require mental health testimony at the hearing and consideration of mental illness in the disposition.” But if the case is kicked to the local DA–no such protections apply.
She continues: “If the incident is related to his mental illness, the lack of adequate treatment for that illness, and his inability to conform to the prison environment due to his illness–isn’t charging him with a crime the ultimate criminalization of the status of his having mental illness? What purpose does the criminal case serve if these are the facts? It isn’t deterrence or rehabilitation–it appears to solely be retribution–is that a sufficient purpose?”

When we described this case to a veteran former New York State corrections officer, he said people like Hall were often doomed from the moment they arrived in prison, if not before. They tended to rack up small felony charges, one after the other, so that they effectively served a life sentence, shut away out of sight in some form of solitary confinement.

In a letter written on April 9, 2012, Hall said: “It’s hard in here for me. I feel like killing myself most of the time like I said but end up cutting myself to relieve the pain or just do things that help me relieve pain. Cutting myself seems the best way but one day I’m going to really cut myself and not tell no one so I can bleed out. That’s how I am feeling nowadays. My life’s gone down the drain.”

The Buffalo office of Prisoner Legal Services of New York, the small but tenacious nonprofit that acts on behalf of inmates in state prisons, sent a letter to Attica asking the mental health unit to look into the situation. Hall wrote both his mother and us that he was making deeper cuts in his arms, cutting into the muscle, building up to a final suicide slitting. On the advice of Prisoner Legal Services, Carole Hall phoned the head of the mental health unit at Attica and told him about the threats. He told Hall he knew nothing about the case but assured her he would look into it.

Whether Hall is alive or dead, whether he has gotten better treatment or simply had his possessions removed and been thrown nearly naked into a suicide cell, his mother doesn’t know.Here's the rest of his story:

http://solitarywatch.com/2012/05/14/criminalizing-mental-illness-the-story-of-adam-hall/#more-5366


Want more? Visit http:// solitarywatch.com/

Bahrain: Despite Sham Ruling the Revolution Continues

This article originally appeared in Prism Magazine.
___________________________________________________________________________________

By William Fisher

As a Bahraini appeals court upheld life sentences for seven “activists,” the tiny kingdom’s public relations apparatus appeared to be on steroids as it issued multiple press releases trumpeting positive developments toward ending a year of violent death and destruction.

The appeals for 13 other opposition figures were also denied. Most life sentences were upheld and a few sentences were reduced.

The near-simultaneous actions of the court and the government left some observers scratching their heads, seeking clarity for what they saw as the country’s schizophrenic policies. But human rights organizations were in no doubt: they condemned the harsh sentences and largely ignored the King’s claims of progress.

“The regime fears that releasing them means they will lead the revolution and gain more momentum,” Maryam Al-Khawaja told Prism. She is Acting President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and one of two activist daughters of one of the eight activists whose life term in prison was confirmed by the Appeals Court. Her father is leading rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who staged a 110-day hunger strike earlier this year in protest.

The strategically important island nation, which is home to the US Fifth Fleet, is ruled by Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, a Sunni Muslim. The majority of the population, however, is Shia. The Shia majority charges that it is systematically discriminated against.

Bahrain has been gripped by conflict since the winter of 2011, after protesters took to the streets, inspired by uprisings that toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia. At least 50 people have died in the conflict thus far.

In the Appeals Court, seven activists’ life sentences were upheld. The sentence of a prominent Sunni opposition activist was reduced to five years. A government prosecutor said many of those convicted were in “intelligence contact” with Iran and Hezbollah, and the official charges range from “violation of the Constitution, conspiring to overthrow the government, [and] espionage.” Seven of the defendants were tried in absentia.

In addition to the eight sentenced to life in prison, 12 others were given lesser prison terms, ranging from five to 15 years, with seven of them convicted in absentia.

Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program, condemned the sentences. “The decision by Bahrain’s appeal court to uphold sentences against 13 opposition activists and prisoners of conscience is outrageous and the authorities must ensure it is overturned and the activists immediately and unconditionally released,” he said.
But the consensus is that release is not going to happen any time soon. Rather, a number of observers said the Bahraini authorities may want to try to use the imprisoned activists as bargaining chips to further their leverage in peace talks.
This week’s sentencing of the 20 is only one of the Kingdom’s many court actions that have drawn angry charges from the human rights community.

The group Physicians for Human Rights denounced the sentences and called on the government to set aside the verdicts against all the medics. “Eighteen of the accused medical professionals have alleged that Bahraini security forces tortured them while in detention,” the group said in a statement.

Maryam Alkhawaja, vice president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and daughter of one of the men receiving life sentences, tweeted that the nine acquittals should not be seen as an achievement, because “they shouldn’t have been arrested and tortured to begin with.”

Some of the medics say they were treating people injured in last year’s protests against the government. Many were arrested in the hospital while treating patients.

Of the 11 whose convictions stand, two are at large, five will be released on time served and the other four can appeal their sentences again, the Bahrain Information Affairs Authority announced.

Meanwhile, the Bahraini government says it is proceeding with implementation of recommendations made by the independent commission facilitated and funded by the king. One of those recommendations was the establishment of an Ombudsman for the Ministry of Interior, which deals with most police matters.

The Ministry has announced that “the new office will conduct independent investigations and adopt an honest, neutral, professional and transparent approach to all investigations of police misconduct.”

The Office of Ombudsman will investigate complaints from civilians against public security force personnel; and is also in charge of overseeing the Internal Affairs Office, keeping records and evidence relating to the investigations and proposing disciplinary actions in appropriate cases.
The Ministry said it was committed to upholding the principles within the new Police Code of Conduct and know that this is an important step in beginning to build trust and mutual respect between the community and the police.”

In another development announced by the government, three human rights organizations will address Family Law for Shiite Women at the UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on September 19, headed by Faisal Fulad. The groups will attend the event in Geneva in which the Government of Bahrain will provide their responses on 176 recommendations, including the one concerning the Jaffari(Shi’ite) Court’s ruling on family law.

Amending the family law to cover Shiite women has been cited by HRH Princess Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa as a necessity for the protection of Bahraini families. MPs of the Bahrain Bloc have made the proposed family law for Shiites their top priority for when they resume their sessions in October.

Meanwhile, arrests and violence continue. But on the whole only human rights organizations and large international bodies like the United Nations are raising their voices in full throated opposition.

For example, ANHRI (Arabic Network for Human Rights Information) is condemning renewal of the imprisonment of the Journalist and blogger Ahmed El-Radah on charges of assembling and breach of public security.

The public prosecution renewed the imprisonment of the journalist and the blogger Ahmed El-Radah for another 15 days due to new charges by Bahraini authorities. These include “initiation of fire in execution of terroristic purposes and having combustible materials (Molotov) and assembling by the intention of breaching the public security through using violence.”

ANHRI charged that the renewal of Ahmed El-Radah’s imprisonment of “proves that the statement of the king of the country that no journalist will be imprisoned because of his opinion, is deemed to be ink on a paper.”

While encouraging royal accommodation leading to peaceful resolution of the conflict, the Bahraini Government’s actions have “put US foreign policy makers in an awkward position,” according to Abolghasem Bayyenat, an independent political analyst and a current Ph.D candidate of political science at Syracuse University .

Writing in Foreign Policy Journal, he said:

“The US government has largely lent its diplomatic weight to the Saudi regime in stifling popular uprising in Bahrain for fear that any democratic transformation in that country would work in Iran’s advantage, thus undermining its own interests in the Persian Gulf region.”

He added, “This posture has further undermined the image of the US before the Middle Eastern public due to its perceived double standards towards regional political developments, and it is likely to work to the detriment of US strategic interests in the region in the long run.”

And, last month, a group of independent United Nations experts voiced serious concerns about the “campaign of persecution” by the Bahraini authorities against those working to promote human rights in the country, and called for the prompt release of a prominent human rights defender recently sentenced to three years imprisonment.

“It is time for the Bahraini authorities to comply with the rights to peaceful assembly and expression and immediately release those arbitrarily detained for exercising their legitimate freedoms,” the experts said in a news release issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Back to the Future With the GOP

By William Fisher

When my friend Brian Foley sent me a copy of the Republican Party 1956 Platform, I had to ask him whether he was acting as a law professor (which he is) or as a stand-up comic and author of a very funny book (which he also is).

“You read it. And then you decide,” he told me. “But read it.”

OK, with such a challenge how could I refuse?

Would the platform bring me visions of Dickens’ Scrooge? Or would it be more like Florence Nightingale?

Only time would tell, so I jumped in feet first.
The GOP Platform that year was 49 pages long. I couldn’t possibly critique it all. So I decided to look at a few 1956 issues that are still issues today, and one or two issues today that seem to have been hidden in plain sight back then. That, plus stuff that just jumped off the page into my computer!

Maybe a bit of context would help the reader (maybe the writer as well). 1956 was the year our President, Dwight David Eisenhower – Ike – was running for his second term. His first term is sometimes described as “quiet” – decompressing from World War Two. But no sooner that war ended, we began the combat of the Cold War, which was expensive and also shaped the national psyche for generations to come. There was the Korean War, to which an “honorable” peace had come. There were what we then called “The Communist Chinese” – once brave allies in the hot war, now being denied by the US a seat at the UN security Council. There were, of course, the expected labor troubles, Taft-Hartley and such, and the usual ups and downs of the capital markets. The biggest worry people seemed to have back then was inflation But, by and large, these were years of pretty good prosperity for many people and years of embarrassing wealth for the very few – and, on many critical issues, a parade of ostriches whistling past the graveyard (how’s that for a mixed-up metaphor?).

So now I began my digging into the Platform and the first thing that jumped off the very first page was this: Our great President Dwight D. Eisenhower has counseled us further: "In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative."

Could you find a paragraph like that in today”s GOP platform? I doubt it.

Or this one: “We are proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance —improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.”

Then came this bit of triumphalist rhetoric: “We have balanced the budget. We believe and will continue to prove that thrift, prudence and a sensible respect for living within income applies as surely to the management of our Government's budget as it does to the family budget.”

Funny, didn’t we believe that Bill Clinton was the first president in decades to balance the federal budget?

What the Grand Old Party really meant to say was that Ike became the first Republican in 40 years to balance a budget.

(Dwight Eisenhower was last Republican President to preside over a balanced budget. He had a balanced budget in 1956 and 1957. Since then, there have been two presidents to preside over balanced budgets, LBJ in 1969 and Clinton in 1998 through 2001. During the last 40 years there have been five budget surpluses, all five were under Democratic Presidents: 1969, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001.)

Then came a familiar meme: “We hold that the major world issue today is whether Government shall be the servant or the master of men. We hold that the Bill of Rights is the sacred foundation of personal liberty. That men are created equal needs no affirmation, but they must have equality of opportunity and protection of their civil rights under the law.”

Sure, we’re familiar with that clarion call for small government. Ike used it. Reagan patented it – “government is the problem.” Bush mouthed the words and grew the government until it collapsed.

This year, both Republicans and Democrats are trying to frame their conventions and campaigns as “choices for the voter” – government should get out of the way or government should provide a strong safety net for all Americans.

We’re also all-too-familiar with other GOP mantras, which they apparently think never wear out and need replacing. For example, the 1956 Platform pledges: “

“Gradual reduction of the national debt; further reductions in taxes with particular consideration for low and middle income families; initiation of a sound policy of tax reductions which will encourage small independent businesses to modernize and progress; continual study of additional ways to correct inequities in the effect of various taxes.”

Holder: Torture Investigation Adieu

The article below By William Fisher originally appeared in the pages of Prism Magazine.


When President Obama said of the issue of the CIA torturing our prisoners that he’d rather go forward than backward, many of us saw this decision coming. Others were hopeful that justice would rise above politics. We wanted those who designed, administered and implemented torture to be held accountable in the only way that matters in our rule-of-law country.

We lost.

“The End,” as described by Scott Horton in Harper’s Magazine:

“Mr. Holder had already ruled out any charges related to the use of waterboarding and other methods that most human rights experts consider to be torture. His announcement closes a contentious three-year investigation by the Justice Department and brings to an end years of dispute over whether line intelligence or military personnel or their superiors would be held accountable for the abuse of prisoners in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The closing of the two cases means that the Obama administration’s limited effort to scrutinize the counterterrorism programs carried out under President George W. Bush has come to an end.”

What this decision means is that, unless it is undone at some point, the United States will hold no one accountable for the stain of shame that will forever more blemish the reputation of the country that has held itself out as the gold standard for justice under law. What it means is that we will face the same kinds of problems when the next war rolls around.

I’m writing this over Labor Day weekend, but I’m far from the only one who’s livid over this decision.

One of Prism’s sources struck a philosophical tone. He is Col. Morris Davis (USAF Ret.) He was appointed to serve as the third Chief Prosecutor in the Guantanamo military commissions but resigned as a protest to the military commissions. He retired from active duty in October 2008, and now teaches law. Here’s what he told us:

“The decision was disappointing, but frankly it came as no surprise. We’re always slow to hold up the mirror to see the warts that detract from our self-image as the most exceptional people on the planet. Slavery, Jim Crow laws, internment of Japanese-Americans, forced sterilization of those labeled ‘defective’, gender discrimination: it’s often many, many years before we’re able to acknowledge a wrong. In the meantime, those who turned us into a torture state are held up as heroes and rewarded – they write books and appear on television, and they hold top positions on government boards, in major corporations, in academia, and even the federal judiciary – while most of us who spoke out against torture are persecuted and, in some cases, prosecuted.”

He added, “It’s a bizarre twist that in America talking about torture, but not committing torture, can get you sent to prison. It’s easy to get discouraged, and the current decision to keep our head buried in the sand awhile longer adds to the discouragement, but I reminded myself every day what Winston Churchill said in 1941: ‘Never, never, never give in.’ We have to keep lifting up the mirror until people look and see the ugly reflection.”

Anger more than disappointment is evident in the comment of Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director, who told Prism, “That the Justice Department will hold no one accountable for the killing of prisoners in CIA custody is nothing short of a scandal. The Justice Department has declined to bring charges against the officials who authorized torture, the lawyers who sought to legitimate it, and the interrogators who used it. It has successfully shut down every legal suit meant to hold officials civilly liable.”

He added, “Continuing impunity threatens to undermine the universally recognized prohibition on torture and other abusive treatment and sends the dangerous signal to government officials that there will be no consequences for their use of torture and other cruelty. Today’s decision not to file charges against individuals who tortured prisoners to death is yet another entry in what is already a shameful record.”

Continuing impunity threatens to undermine the universally recognized prohibition on torture and other abusive treatment and sends the dangerous signal to government officials that there will be no consequences for their use of torture and other cruelty.

And this was the view expressed in the Huffington Post by Daphne Eviatar, senior counsel at Human Rights First:

“In his statement yesterday, [Attorney General] Holder said he’d declined to prosecute anyone in the CIA ‘because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt’. He didn’t explain what kind of evidence he’d judged not ‘admissible’. But certainly all CIA agents who’d participated in or witnessed the abuse of the two detainees whose deaths were being investigated would have similarly ‘had access to classified intelligence sources and methods’ that the government doesn’t want revealed.”



Eviatar noted that, in a 2006 report, Human Rights First “documented that up to 12 men had been tortured to death in U.S. custody since 2002. Reviewing documents we’ve received more recently through a Freedom of Information Act request to the government, it now appears that up to 19 of 247 deaths involved torture. In only six of those cases was anyone held criminally liable. According to military documents, many more detainees — we’ve counted 72 so far — are believed to have been murdered. While in some cases charges were brought, in many they were dropped or the perpetrators received only administrative sanctions.”

Then she reminded us that CIA Director “David Petraeus sent a statement to CIA employees assuring them that the matter has been put to rest. ‘As intelligence officers, our inclination, of course, is to look ahead to the challenges of the future rather than backwards at those of the past’.

She concluded with: “That may be the CIA’s inclination, but the agency is still obligated to investigate when its agents break the law. And surely the Justice Department has no excuse. Its role is always to investigate what happened in the past and to hold those responsible for crimes accountable. When it comes to the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody, many of whom were clearly tortured to death, all relevant branches of the U.S. government have fallen down on the job.”

Chip Pitts, former CEO of Amnesty USA and now a lecturer at Stanford and Oxford, weighed in with this:

“When those in power break the rules merely because they can, it inspires mistrust and derision instead of trust and confidence. The reverberations from this nauseating decision extend much farther than the Obama administration realizes, because (contrary to the arguments of its defenders) it cavalierly ignores the rule of law just as the Bush administration did – and on a subject (torture) and an area (legally required accountability) of universal import.”

Such “hypocritical and politically opportunistic decisions have systemic implications. Those systemic implications cannot be avoided or cloaked by the administration’s ludicrous claims of insufficient evidence in these well-documented extreme cases (in which not even one person has been held accountable for torture), or by this obviously self-interested precedent established in hopes of avoiding the administration’s own future accountability for assassination and other illegal acts.

Pitts added, “All of this is exquisitely ironic in light of the administration’s aggressive pursuit of the whistleblowers who’ve sought to shed light on such crimes. The implications for US foreign policy and for international law generally could not be clearer: Our country’s actions will be less effective and our calls for legal compliance more ridiculed, than before.”

And he concluded: “The trust reposed in those in power and in our legal and other institutions erodes further, whether from the perspective of those at home or abroad.

And greater play is given not only to torturers but more generally to similarly horrendous and illegal ongoing and future policies and to the coarse, violent, and uncivilized actions currently continuing to lead our nation in a downward spiral of dramatic relative decline.”
So there you have it. It’s over. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Guardian, “The Obama administration’s aggressive, full-scale whitewashing of the ‘war on terror’ crimes committed by Bush officials is now complete. Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the closing without charges of the only two cases under investigation relating to the US torture program: one that resulted in the 2002 death of an Afghan detainee at a secret CIA prison near Kabul, and the other the 2003 death of an Iraqi citizen while in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib. This decision, says the New York Times Friday, “eliminat[es] the last possibility that any criminal charges will be brought as a result of the brutal interrogations carried out by the CIA”.

This news was consigned to the Friday afternoon dump, and distributed during the Republican National Convention, so as to attract minimal media attention. By and large, our stenographic press corps obliged; few major publications carried this bombshell.

Romney was their dish of the day.

Well, the Romneys of the world will come and go. But the historic nature of this day – September 1st, 2012 — will be with us forever.
But perhaps there is one more slender chance left. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) reminds us:

“Once again, the United States has shown it is committed to absolving itself of any responsibility for its crimes over the past decade. Today’s announcement belies U.S. claims that it can be trusted to hold accountable Americans who have perpetrated torture and other human rights abuses, and underscores the need for independent investigations elsewhere, such as the investigation underway in Spain, to continue. Impunity does not always cross borders.”

Morsi Between Censorship and Freedom of the Press

The article below originally appeared in the pages of Prism Magazine.


By William Fisher

Ten years ago, when I retired from my work with USAID and the US State Department, I reverted to my first love – journalism.

My plan was modest: I would draw on my experience in the Middle East and elsewhere to report on US reactions to developments in the region, particularly in Egypt, which had been my last posting, I had no idea how labor-intensive this work would become. I had no idea that an Arab Spring was in the offing. Lamentably, I expected to be writing pretty depressing pieces about the worst excesses of the Mubarak regime – the crony capitalism, the highly partisan justice system, the torture in prison, the imposition of the so-called emergency laws, the faux elections, and the absence of any semblance of free speech and free expression.

These were the same ugly deficits I experienced during my years in Egypt while trying to help the country’s trade sector to compete effectively for world markets and begin to realize the promise of globalization.
I remember that my first articles were submitted to the Middle East Times. When I received copies of that paper from the publisher, I didn’t know whether to be enraged or amused. There were large sections of the front page where nothing was printed. I learned later that one of those blanks was what I’d written. Well, at least I had the satisfaction of knowing that the editor intended to put my work on his front page.

Now what I had written was totally non-controversial. It was clear that it was chopped simply because the government censors didn’t understand it.

An inauspicious beginning, to be sure. But I decided there was nothing to gain from being enraged and so I settled for being amused.
Then came The Arab Spring, as the media named it. The promise was that everything would be different. The people would write a new constitution and be allowed to vote freely for multiple candidates for the first time in centuries. There would be jobs for all the college graduates now driving taxies. There would be trials and convictions and incarcerations for the members of the Mubarak inner circle who had become wealthy from the favors heaped on them by the supreme dictator. That inner circle included the military, which had effectively ruled the country since the Tahir Square revolution of January 25, 2011.

But now, eleven months after the Revolution, too many aspects of current Egypt are slipping back into standard Mubarak behavior.

One of these is the heavy-handed censorship of print and electronic media actually taking place in real time – almost as if there had never been a Revolution.

For example:

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI ) Condemned the Monitoring and Confiscation Policy through Stopping the Opinion Articles in the National Newspapers

ANHRI denounced the attack on the freedom of opinion and speech, which represented in the stopping of publishing of several articles in the national newspapers. The organization said, “The attack reached its climax when ‘Al-Akhbar’ stopped publishing the articles of the writer and the novelist Ibrahim Abdulmeged, which used to be published on every Thursday morning.

The writer said, “The decision of stopping my articles is consistent with the new editing policy launched by the new editor in chief, “Mohamed Hasan El-Bana” the writer, who was appointed by the Shura Council.

“Abdelmeeged” indicated that the policy of the new editor in chief is to stop dealing with the writers who criticize the Muslim Brotherhood Group. He quoted the newspaper’s officials saying that “all the opinion articles, for whom outside of the newspaper, will be stopped.”

He added “it is regretful to say that the editors in chief appointed by the National Democratic party were more professionals”.
In the same context, “Medhat El-Adl” said that he stopped writing to Al-Akhbar after the clear interference in his articles, “due to the editing policy changed in the favor of the Islamic trend.”

The news spread that the stopping of “Free Opinion Page” in “Al-Akhbar” Newspaper”, which is a page full with several Egyptian writers and creators as “Mohamod El-Werdani”, “Medhat El-Adl” and “Abdelmeeged”.

“Al-Qaeed” said this matter is conducted because the writings that criticizes the Muslim brotherhood policies, as well as accusing the editors-in chief that he tends to them and he won’t publish opinions against the MB in the newspaper.

Last week “Al-Akhbar” banned the publishing of an article to the big writer “Ableeah El-rewaini” as she described the appointing of the new editor in chief as “Brotherization” of the newspapers. The publishing officials asked her to delete the expression of “Brotherization”, but she refused so the article was banned.

“Al-Ahram” took the same steps through banning the publishing of the ex-leader in MB article, who used to criticizes them in his articles.

It is also stopped the publishing of “A hundred days of the president’s promises” by the decision of the new editor in chief, Abdulnasser Salama, without reasons. The page aimed to monitor the president to fulfill his promises of the first hundred days of his rule.

ANHRI said it resents this “severe attack targeted the freedom of speech and opinion.” It warned of “getting back to the practices of the old regime which aim to silence the mouths and harass the freedom of journalism which are the important guarantee to a good political life.”

ANHRI said, “We fear that the newspapers’ new policy aims to ban criticisms of the Muslim brotherhood group in the light of the control, of Shura Council of the MB’s majority, on the process of appointing the leaders of these newspapers. ANHRI calls for the necessity of changing the ownership of these newspapers and liberating it from the government as well as taking the procedures to fix the media to guarantee creating an independent, professional and credible media.

The reaction of Egypt’s human rights community was predictable and expected. It was also surprising that it was triggered so soon after the Revolution under the steel-soled boots of the military-led government.

For example, in a statement, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) “expressed its most sincere concern at the continued use of censorship as a State policy in dealing with media and journalism professionals.”

EOHR charged that “the most recent implementation of this stifling practice includes the State order to confiscate a series of publications by the ‘El Dostor’ Newspaper that were scheduled for publication on Saturday, 11th of August, 2012. This action was based on the investigations carried out by the Prosecutor General within the context of the reports submitted to the Prosecutor General’s Office. The ‘El Dostor’ Newspaper was charged with the alleged incitement of sectarian sedition, the insult of the President, and the incitement of social chaos.”

Several individuals were noted to have submitted formal complaints to the Publishing Crime Department within the Ministry of Interior, accusing the “El Dostor” Newspaper, and the Newspaper’s Chairman, Reda Edward and Editor-in-Chief Islam Afifi, of slandering the President and inciting sectarian sedition in several consecutive issues.

Could there be a move torn more directly from the Mubarak playbook?

Furthermore, the issued complaints also held that “El Dostor’s” headlines were a principle cause to the sectarian clashes of Dahshour, and subsequently requested that appropriate legal action be taken against the Chairman of the Newspaper, as well as the Editor-in-Chief. Authorities called for the appearance of Editor-in-Chief Islam Afifi before the Prosecutor General for questioning in light of the submitted complaints and the investigation’s findings.

ANHRI is severely annoyed of the increasing of the Monitoring and confiscation policy imposed on the Egyptian newspapers. Algomhuria stopped a page deal with the freedom of speech and confiscation in Egypt, which is the culture page. El-Mosawr Magazine stopped publishing the rest of the series of the book "returning from the Brotherhood's paradise". In the same time, an edition of El-Shab newspaper was confiscated, which was prepared to be distributing due to an article of the Egyptian Intelligence body.

The group said, “This is the most violent attack on the Egyptian newspapers and media after the 25th revolution and after Dr. Morsi became the president, such attacks contradicted with the president Morsi speech of respecting the freedom of speech as a guarantee to the civil state.”
ANHRI said, “The attempts to justify the confiscation, monitoring and the criminal prosecution bring the journalists back to square zero and threatens of an era free from criticizing and fears of jail or oppression due to a word and an opinion".

It also declared “the absence of the political will to fix the Egyptian media, which suffers from a long decades of un-professionality and the lack of impartiality and was the reason of several crimes against the revolution and the revolutionaries, such as incitement against the Egyptian Christians which has become known as ‘Maspero’.

But President Morsi found himself under extreme public pressure from the journalists. In what appeared to be a rush by President Morsi to create distance between his actions and the press, Morsi backed off the decree that jailed journalist Islam Afifi, a newsletter editor. The Associated Press reported that Morsi “intervened to release a journalist jailed over accusations of insulting him.” The AP reported that Morsi issued a law for the first time since he assumed legislative powers earlier this month.

President Morsi's ban on detention for journalists accused of publishing-related offenses takes precedence over a court decision that kept the editor in prison pending trial this month. It was the first decree Morsi enacted since taking office.

The court's decision and case against Afifi, accused of slandering the president and undermining public interest, has caused uproar in Egypt among journalists and intellectuals, with dozens holding a protest Thursday night in Cairo demanding the protection of free speech.
It seems clear at this point that Morsi is hearing Egypt’s journalists. They need to be able to write whatever seems true to them. Much of this prose is not going to cause Morsi to break into a smile. He will be very angry with much of it.

But this is one of the prices that has to be paid by those who would govern a multi-factional Egypt. Democracy is messy. Dictatorship is far more orderly and predictable. But Tahrir Square proved that Egyptians favor democracy over order and predictability.

Which means that, over time, Mr. Morsi will learn to live with his critics – he will not throw them in jail. Just as hopefully, Egypt will continue to develop a mature, independent, responsible, fact-based press capable of criticizing its Government without committing treason.

No Accountability for Torturers

The article below was written by Marjorie Cohn and published in the Huffington Post. It is repreoduced here with the author's permission. Marjorie Cohn is a professor at the Thomas Jefferson Scool of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She testified before Congress in 2008 about Bush interrogation policy. Her book, The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse, was released this year in paperback. Visit her blog.

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The Obama administration has closed the books on prosecutions of those who violated our laws by authorizing and conducting the torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody. Last year, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that his office would investigate only two incidents, in which CIA interrogations ended in deaths. He said the Justice Department "has determined that an expanded criminal investigation of the remaining matters is not warranted."

With that decision, Holder conferred amnesty on countless Bush officials, lawyers andinterrogators who set and carried out a policy of cruel treatment.

Now the attorney general has given a free pass to those responsible for the deaths of Gul Rahman and Manadel al-Jamadi. Rahman froze to death in 2002 after being stripped and shackled to a cold cement floor in the secret Afghan prison known as the Salt Pit. Al-Jamadi died after he was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists which were bound behind his back. MP Tony Diaz, who witnessed al-Jamadi's torture, said that blood gushed from his mouth like "a faucet had turned on" when he was lowered to the ground. A military autopsy concluded that al-Jamadi's death was a homicide.

Nevertheless, Holder announced that "based on the fully developed factual record concerning the two deaths, the department has declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt."

Amnesty for torturers is unacceptable. General Barry McCaffreydeclared, "We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered > dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces andthe CIA." Major General Anthony Taguba, who directed the Abu Ghraib investigation, wrote that "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the [Bush] administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account." Holder has answered Taguba's question with a resounding "no."

Some have suggested that Holder's decisions have been motivated by political considerations. For example, Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, wrote that "dredging up the crimes of the previous administration was seen as too distracting and too antagonistic an enterprise when Republican votes were needed." And closing the books> on legal accountability for Bush officials may remove one more Republican attack on Obama in the next two months before the presidential election.

But the Obama administration's decision to allow the lawbreakers to go > free is itself a violation of the law. The Constitution says that the > president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." When the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, we promised to extradite or prosecute those who commit, or are complicit in the commission, of torture. The Geneva Conventions also mandate that we prosecute or extradite those who commit, or are complicit in the commission of, torture.

There are two federal criminal statutes for torture prosecutions--the U.S. Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act; the latter punishes torture as a war crime. The Torture Convention is unequivocal:> nothing, including a state of war, can be invoked as a justification for torture.

 By letting American officials, lawyers and interrogators get away with torture - and indeed, murder - the United States sacrifices any right to scold or punish other countries for their human rights violations.