This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Some New Yorkers were also "angry at the prospect of the men coming to a city traumatized by the hijacked-plane attacks eight years ago, but others voiced relief that justice may soon be done." They'll arrive in January, be held at a federal detention facility, and be tried on confessions obtained under torture that the Supreme Court ruled constitutionally inadmissible in Brown v. Mississippi (February 1936), saying:
"The rack and torture chamber may not be substituted for the witness stand."
It cited an earlier Fisher v. State (November 1926) High Court decision, stating:
"Coercing the supposed state's criminals into confessions and using such confessions so coerced from them against them in trials has been the curse of all countries. It was the chief iniquity, the crowning infamy of the Star Chamber (the nororious 15th - 17th century English court), and the Inquisition, and other similar institutions. The Constitution recognized the evils that lay behind these practices and prohibited them in this country....wherever the court is clearly satisfied that such violations exist, it will refuse to sanction such violation and will apply the corrective."
The alleged guilt of these men is very suspect given that they confessed under torture. More evidence also raises doubts. According to Mark Denebeaux and other Seton Hall University Law professors, unclassified government data obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests revealed evidentiary summaries from 2004 military hearings on whether 517 Guantanamo detainees were enemy combatants. They showed that:
-- at most, few Afghan Guantanamo prisoners committed violent acts;
-- 95% were seized by bounty hunters paid $5,000 per claimed Taliban and $25,000 for alleged Al Queda members; and
-- 20 were children, some as young as 13, but all were brutally tortured as later revealed.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
