Saturday, Oct 25th
Last update08:50:45 AM GMT
Human Rights Glance
A federal appeals court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit against two U.S. defense contractors by Iraqi torture victims, saying the companies had immunity as government contractors.
The lawsuit was filed in 2004 on behalf of Iraqi nationals who say they or their relatives had been tortured or mistreated while detained by the U.S. military at the Abu Ghraib prison.
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TVNL Comment: Contractors had immunity, but not an iota of accountability. They hate us for our freedoms. Yeah, right.
Seven months after his release from Guantanamo Bay, Mustafa Ait Idr cautiously sips coffee in a Sarajevo cafe. His face is still partially paralyzed and numb from when guards pinned him onto gravel and jumped on him. He is nursing a broken finger — punishment for refusing to strip naked in his cell. On another occasion, his head was held in a toilet for prolonged periods of time.
Now a free man, Ait Idr proudly displays his Bosnian ID Card, which was only recently reinstated. He is still unable to find employment or access his bank account.
Israel is using the country's legal system to segregate and penalise its Palestinian citizens and prohibit Arab dissent
Two cases brought before Israeli courts last week revealed the attitude of the establishment towards Palestinian Arab citizens of the state. One shows how Palestinian citizens are treated as victims of police brutality, and the second shows how they are regularly victimised because of their opposition to injustice.
From 2003 to 2006, the Bush administration quietly tried to relax the draft language of a treaty meant to bar and punish "enforced disappearances" so that those overseeing the CIA's secret prison system would not be criminally prosecuted under its provisions, according to former officials and hundreds of pages of documents recently declassified by the State Department.
Ninety percent of casualties brought to Gaza's main hospital during Israel's winter offensive against Hamas were civilians, according to a new book by one of Norway's most famous and controversial physicians, Dr. Mads Gilbert.
The book, scheduled to be published this month under the title "I in Gaza," recounts Gilbert's experiences as a volunteer at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and focuses on individual stories by patients and medical staff.
Belgium on Friday became the latest European country to offer asylum to a Guantanamo Bay detainee, announcing that it would resettle a captive now at the prison camps who has been cleared of prosecution by a U.S. court.
The announcement follows similar deals between the Obama administration and France and Portugal, which last month took in two Syrians for resettlement. Ireland has also agreed to take two detainees seeking third-country asylum.
By all accounts, the interrogation of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush went terribly wrong. Military guards accused his interrogators of beating the detainee and stuffing his body into a sleeping bag bound with electrical cord until he suffocated.
When it came time for a CIA employee to testify during the court-martial of Army Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, however, officials went to great lengths to protect the employee's identity, erecting a high, Army-green tarpaulin to shield him from spectators.
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