Release of Classified Report on CIA Torture Has Justice Dept. Considering Criminal Prosecution

The New York Times reported today that the Justice Department released a report on Monday that had been kept classified since the CIA inspector general's investigation in 2004. The actual text of the report is here. The report details the abuse that went on in CIA prisons, such as "suggestions about sexually assaulting members of a detainee’s family, staging mock executions, intimidation with a handgun and power drill, and blowing cigar and cigarette smoke into prisoners’ faces to make them vomit," according to the Times. The report was released by court order after the ACLU brought a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.

Attorney general Eric Holder has appointed John Durham, a prosecutor from Connecticut, to review whether a full criminal investigation of the CIA is necessary. Durham has already assisted Holder in the investigation following the CIA's destruction of videotapes of overseas interrogations. Holder has faced a lot of criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for his position. Nevertheless, he remains determined to carry out his official duties to the letter: “As attorney general, my duty is to examine the facts and to follow the law. Given all of the information currently available, it is clear to me that this review is the only responsible course of action for me to take.”
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Newark Authorities Detained Shah Rukh Khan

The famous Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan was detained in Newark Friday on his way to Chicago, according to an article on NBC. Khan originally believed that he was being taken to a separate room because of his celebrity status. But Newark authorities were not in a hospitable mood. Khan reports that the guards interrogated him for hours as to why he was in the country. Ironically, he recently filmed a movie about racial profiling in the U.S.

Khan was on his way to Chicago on Friday to celebrate India's independence day. According to another article in the New York Daily News, Khan was interrogated for two hours before he was permitted to call the Indian Embassy in Washington, which vouched for the star and requested his release.

Khan believes that suspicions surrounding his Muslim name sparked his detention. "I did not want to say anything just in case they took everything wrong, because I am a little worried about Americans because they do have this issue when your name is Muslim," he told reporters. (Trust me, they have issues even when your name is NOT Muslim.)

Khan's new movie, scheduled for release in 2010, is titled My Name is Khan, and is the story of a Muslim man mistaken for a terrorist in post-9/11 America.
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Stalker Received Felony Conviction For Following Woman in Headscarf

The events happened in 2006, but the appeal was decided only this week, according to the legal blog Volokh Conspiracy. As the blog reports, a Muslim immigrant from Somalia was driving to work the day after 9/11/06 when she noticed a blue van following her closely, even into the parking lot! She ran quickly into the building, but before she could reach the door, the window of the blue van rolled down and a woman's voice "confronted her about Islamic terrorism and her Islamic religious beliefs, and told [the Muslim woman] that she felt like killing her." The Minnesota DA prosecuted criminal charges, resulting in a felony conviction--the increase from misdemeanor to felony was because the defendant was motivated by the victim's religious beliefs. Ironically, the stalker appealed, claiming that the state stalking laws violated her First Amendment rights.

As scholars of the First Amendment know, the Constitution protects only free speech, not conduct. Surely speech was involved in this case, but the Minnesota Court of Appeals was at a loss as to how this should protect the stalker's behavior. You can read the court's decision here. Basically, stalking in MN requires an intent to harass, and this intent does not depend on whether any actual verbal communication was made. In fact, the jury record reflects that the convictions were based on the driver's behavior rather than what she said in the parking lot (except to enhance the conviction from misdemeanor to felony).

The bottom line is that you do not have a right to follow someone in a threatening manner in order to rank on their religion, no matter how peaceably you communicate your bigotry. One might wonder whether this fine specimen of American citizenry had anything better to do other than chase women in headscarves. In her testimony, she claimed to be picking up her son from school across the street from the parking lot--which the jury did not believe.

A felony conviction is no joke: in this case, the driver has been sentenced to a year in jail. (For a misdemeanor, she may have received a much shorter sentance or no jail time at all, depending on state sentencing guidelines.)

Incidentally, we strongly recommend reading this short article from roadandtravel.com on What to do When Being Followed. You never know if this might happen to you, and what if it had been a Texan with a shotgun instead of a housewife from Minnesota?
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Court Gives Tariq Ramadan A Second Chance

The New York Times reported on Friday that the Second Circuit has reversed a ruling by the lower court that denied Tariq Ramadan a hearing concerning the government's revocation of his visa. The revocation, according to the Bush administration, was based on donations that Mr. Ramadan had made to charities that were linked to terrorist organizations, including Hamas. Mr. Ramadan stated that he was unaware of the connection, and had made the donations believing that the money would be used for humanitarian services. The appeals court found that Mr. Ramadan is entitled to due process on the issue, but the good news ends there.

To give you an idea on the posturing of the Bush administration, you need to understand that the donations Mr. Ramadan made that ultimately rendered him ineligible for a visa totaled only $1,300 dollars over a span of 3 years. Even if Mr. Ramadan knew that the organization would share this money with Hamas, it's hard to imagine how this amount could be considered "material support." Nevertheless, the government revoked his visa in 2004 and denied him a visa when he reapplied in 2006. This interrupted Mr. Ramadan's career plans, as he was expected to become a tenured professor at Notre Dame.

The Second Circuit court of appeals decided that Mr. Ramadan deserved a day in court. Unfortunately, it will be Mr. Ramadan in the hot seat, not the government. The appeals court held that he must be afforded a chance to prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that he did not know, nor should he have known, of the connection between the charity and Hamas.

How does one prove one's lack of knowledge? The difficulty of proving such a thing is the reason why it's normally the other way around: the government should have to prove that Mr. Ramadan in fact knew or should have known of the connection. The standard of proof is another humdinger--"clear and convincing" is a step above "preponderance of the evidence," which is the legal term for "more likely than not," and is a step below "beyond a reasonable doubt." This means that he'll have to convince the fact finder that it was more than just probably true that he didn't know of the charity's link to Hamas. The standard of proof combined with the thing that Mr. Ramadan has to actually prove makes his success nearly impossible.

Thanks to the Second Circuit for having the appearance of justice while maintaining the Bush administration's agenda behind the mask.
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CIA Attorneys Face Bar Disciplinary Complaints

News has been slow at WT, and we may need another fierce animal to assist us with making regular posts. Meanwhile, though, we have at least some good news to share: a group known as the Velvet Revolution has filed disciplinary complaints wiht the DC Office of Professional Responsibility against three CIA attorneys for their roles in the United States' use of torture. The Velvet Revolution's Disbarment Campaign actually began on May 18, 2009, when the group filed disciplinary complaints against twelve other attorneys, including John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales. If the politicians who claim to represent the people won't do what is right, the people will do it themselves.
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FBI Spied on Muslims in Gyms

According to an article in the Los Angeles Times earlier this week, the FBI hired an informant in 2006 to infiltrate the Muslim community of Orange County, CA. The informant, Craig Monteilh, posed as a converted Muslim and made friends at local mosques, then encouraged his new buddies to excercise with him at local gym clubs, where cameras captured the action and a secret microphone captured conversations. The objective was to get victims to spill any dirty secrets, which the FBI could then use as blackmail to push the victims to become informants themselves. Monteilh did so well that the FBI planned to open a gym that catered to Muslims specifically, with a prayer room on the premises, and completely bugged with hidden cameras and microphones.

Ironically, Monteilh is suing the government for not keeping their end of the bargain: he was to receive $100 GRAND and be put into their witness protection program. Instead, the FBI dropped him when one of his supervisors questioned his credibility.

The FBI is sending very mixed signals about whether racial profiling is involved. According to one agent:

"White little old ladies aren't blowing up buildings and planes. We're looking at these people based on the fact that there's a terrorist threat in the Islamic community . . . there's no other way."

Another agent giving comment for the article, however, said that "It's absurd to suggest that FBI agents are randomly targeting Middle Eastern men or any other ethnic group for investigation."

The best twist to this story is that the Muslims in one mosque reported Monteilh to the FBI in 2007 for promoting terrorist plots and trying to get recruits. Monteilh himself has been convicted twice of felonies.
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The Investigations Continue

According to an article in last week's Washington Post, in 2005 the CIA had destroyed 92 videotapes of their overseas interrogations. The tapes were destroyed despite a 2004 court order directing the agency to preserve all material related to overseas interrogations. Federal prosecutor John Durham was appointed last year to investigate this destruction of evidence, and these findings are the results of his inquiries. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is attempting to dismiss a case in the D.C. Circuit by claiming that detainees in Guantanamo do not have due process rights, despite a Supreme Court decision last year finding that Guantanamo detainees have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in federal court. Actions such as these have convinced Americans--and the world at large--that the new administration is bringing more of the same. Durham's investigation, therefore, is only the beginning.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is seriously considering establishing a commission to investigate the full actions of the Bush adminstration. A hearing was held last week, and you can listen to the hearing here. (You will need Real Player). The United Nations is involved, too. A special rapporteur is investigating the CIA's use of extraordinary renditions, which is when the agency sent detainees to interrogations in countries that practice torture. The special rapportuer has written a report, which can be read here. This report, unlike the Senate commission, has also looked into the current practices of the new adminsitration. As he states in his report, the special rapporteur is not optimistic about "change" as Barak Obama advertised in his campaign.
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American Public Demands Torture Investigation as Obama Maintains Status Quo

A Gallup Poll released last week reveals that the majority of Americans want an investigation into the counterterrorism tacticts employed by the Bush Administration, according to an article in USA Today. Meanwhile, however, Barak Obama's Justice Department maintained the states secrets privilege in a case alleging the Bush Administration had engaged in torture against Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohammed.

More than a third of Americans want a criminal investigation of the Bush administration, while nearly another quarter want an independent panel, according to the results of the poll. The complacency of the new Justice Department was even criticized by a Democrat in an editorial in the New York Times last week.

To be fair, the new administration has had very little time to separate the wheat from the chaff of policies produced by the Bush administration. But Barak Obama ran on a radical platform of change, and the people rallied behind that policy. The message that the Gallup poll and the elections give Obama is to start from scratch rather than work with these tainted ingredients.
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