ZGram - 9/16/2004 - "Judge Orders Govt to Hand Over Detainee Documents"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

September 16, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

While we are waiting to learn how today's hearing went, here is a 
piece of good news that ought to help our case as well, since by 
international human rights standards of the most important global 
agencies dealing with human abuse, what has happened to Ernst Zundel 
certainly was torture condoned and possibly directly ordered by 
malicious agencies, if not the government! 

Just think that since February 2003 - more than a year and a half! - 
he has not been permitted to sleep in a dark room!  And that is only 
one of countless other abuses, many of which have been documented and 
made known to the agencies in charge, as well as to our legislators 
in three large format, full page ads in Washington, as well as 
through phone calls, letters, email, and faxes!

[START]

September 16, 2004

Judge Orders Govt to Hand Over Detainee Documents

by Jim Lobe

In a victory for human and civil rights groups, a federal judge has 
given the government 30 days to turn over or identify all documents 
relating to the treatment of detainees held by the United States at 
military bases and other detention facilities overseas, including at 
the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Abu Ghraib prison in 
Iraq.

The ruling by Judge Alvin Hellerstein, which may be appealed by the 
government, was the latest development in a lawsuit filed in June by 
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and several other rights 
groups to compel the government to disclose records bearing on the 
possible abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody pursuant to 
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests first submitted 11 months 
ago.

Declaring that "no one is above the law," Hellerstein said, "merely 
raising national security concerns cannot justify unlimited delays" 
in complying with the requests. The government had requested that the 
judge delay the release of all documents until 2005.

"Ours is a government of laws, laws duly promulgated and laws duly 
observed," he said in the order issued by his office in New York City 
Wednesday. "No one is above the law: not the executive, not the 
Congress, not the judiciary."

"If the documents are more of an embarrassment than a secret, the 
public should know of our government's treatment of individuals 
captured and held abroad," he noted, criticizing the "glacial pace" 
with which the George W. Bush administration had responded to the 
groups' requests.

The original FOIA request, which was directed to the Pentagon and the 
Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and State, asked them to 
immediately process and release all records of the abuse or torture 
of detainees held at Abu Ghraib and other overseas detention 
facilities, including the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and 
records of investigations and inquiries that resulted from reports of 
abuse.

The initial FOIA request also asked for records of the deaths of 
detainees in U.S. custody and any records of investigations into 
those deaths. According to recent news reports, several dozen 
detainees have died in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and Iraq since 
late 2001; at least 16 of them have been classified as homicides.

The FOIA also requested all records regarding policies governing the 
interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody and the "rendition" of 
detainees to other countries known to use torture.

Ironically, the original request was filed at around the same time 
that abuses at Abu Ghraib prison were being photographed by soldiers 
participating in the abuse. The disclosure of those photographs and 
their reproduction in the world's media in April set off a major 
scandal which the administration is still trying to overcome.

When the initial request was filed, however, relatively little was 
known about the treatment of detainees. At the time, the 
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had privately 
conveyed its concerns - provoked by visits to detention facilities - 
to the administration about conditions in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

Some articles about alleged abuses, based largely on interviews with 
released detainees, had appeared in the U.S. press, while human 
rights groups, notably Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch 
(HRW), also said that they had received reports of abuses.

Several months after the initial request, the groups, which also 
included the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Center for 
Constitutional Rights (CCR), Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), 
Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans for Peace, asked for 
additional records that described measures taken by the government to 
address concerns expressed by the ICRC.

Until April, the government agencies rejected repeated appeals by the 
groups to expedite processing of the requests, arguing that "the life 
or safety of any individual" would not be jeopardized by delay and 
that the requests did not raise "questions about the government's 
integrity which affect public confidence." After the April 
disclosures, however, those arguments were severely weakened, 
according to the groups' attorneys.

In June, they filed an unprecedented lawsuit aimed at compelling the 
government to disclose records under the FOIA. The lawsuit followed 
both the disclosure of the photographs depicting the sexual and 
physical abuse of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison, which in turn 
spurred several Congressional hearings, as well as outraged 
editorials in the U.S. and global press.

A series of internal Pentagon investigations - as well as several 
courts martial to date - ensued, indicating that the abuse was much 
more widespread than initially maintained by the administration. A 
series of press leaks also disclosed that high-level political 
appointees in the Pentagon, the Justice Department, the White House 
and the vice president's office had prepared memos that appeared 
intended to justify abuses and torture of detainees under certain 
circumstances.

As a result, a number of organizations, including the American Bar 
Association (ABA), as well as rights groups such as HRW and Human 
Rights First, have called for a comprehensive, independent and 
bipartisan investigation of detention and interrogation policies and 
practices on the order of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. These 
appeals have been ignored by the administration, which has insisted 
that such an effort is unnecessary in view of the steps already taken 
by the Pentagon to remedy the situation.

Last week, eight senior retired military officers - most of whom held 
top legal positions in the armed services - joined the call for an 
independent investigation, insisting that the Pentagon's own 
inquiries and courts-martial were too limited in scope and could not 
address the issue of high-level responsibility for abuses.

The FOIA lawsuit, however, may provide yet another avenue for 
obtaining information about detention policies and practices.

"The court today vindicated the public's right to know who is 
responsible for the systemic abuse of detainees held in United States 
custody," said Amrit Singh, an ACLU attorney working on the case. 
"The truth must be known, no matter how embarrassing it might be to 
the government."

(Inter Press Service)

[END]