Not even a month after President Barack Obama signed his name to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, the US government is already using the legislation to justify its ongoing detainment of a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. - Musa'ab al-Madhwani had barely entered adulthood when he first arrived at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in 2002. But in the months between his capture in Pakistan and transfer to Gitmo, the Yemeni national experienced more than most would see in a lifetime. Before he turned 23, he says he was beaten and kicked, threatened with death and suspended by his hands in an underground torture chamber. Now for the prisoner, about to celebrate the 10-year-anniversary of his arrival at Gimo, the rest of that lifetime looks to be spent behind bars thanks to the NDAA.

Libyan judicial police have started taking control of makeshift prisons in the country after human rights organizations complained of rampant torture of inmates, the country's deputy justice minister said on Sunday. - The deputy minister, Khalifa Ashour, said uniformed police have been dispatched to some prisons where former rebels have been holding people accused of being loyalists of deposed ruler Moammar Gadhafi. During last year's civil war, former rebels trying to protect their neighborhoods held anyone deemed suspicious of being a Gadhafi loyalist or mercenary, locking them up in makeshift prisons in schools, homes and empty government buildings. According to the U.N., various former rebel groups are holding as many as 8,000 prisoners in 60 detention centers around the country.

Stephen Lendman: Torture and Abuse in Libya
Stephen Lendman: Violence Rages in Libya

Human Rights Chief Slams Arbitrary Detentions. - In a statement issued today, UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay slammed the Obama Administrationfor reneging on promises to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility. “It is ten years since the US Government opened the prison at Guantánamo, and now three years since 22 January 2009, when the President ordered its closure within twelve months,” the statement noted. “Yet the facility continues to exist and individuals remain arbitrarily detained – indefinitely – in clear breach of international law.” The massive facility has seen eight detainees die in custody, including six termed “suicides” by the US government, and only six “trials” have ever been completed. President Obama has expressed the belief that many of the detainees will be held without trial for the rest of their lives. Despite making no effort to close the facility, President Obama’s advisers insist he remains “committed” to closing Guantánamo. The new commander at the facility has also imposed strict new rules, sparking increasing unrest among the inmates, who after a decade are growing less and less confident they will ever see anything resembling a courtroom.

A report released last week by Middle East human rights groups presents extensive evidence of war crimes carried out in Libya by the United States, NATO and their proxy “rebel” forces during last year’s war, which brought down the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The “Report of the Independent Civil Society Fact-Finding Mission to Libya” presents findings of an investigation carried out last November by the Arab Organization for Human Rights, together with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the International Legal Assistance Consortium. Based on interviews with victims of war crimes as well as with witnesses and Libyan officials in Tripoli, Zawiya, Sibrata, Khoms, Zliten, Misrata, Tawergha and Sirte, the report calls for the investigation of evidence that NATO targeted civilian sites, causing many deaths and injuries. Civilian facilities targeted by NATO bombs and missiles included schools, government buildings, at least one food warehouse, and private homes.

Bill Van Auken: Human rights groups charge NATO with war crimes in Libya

The Justice Department on Monday charged a former Central Intelligence Agency officer with disclosing classified information to journalists about the capture and brutal interrogation of a suspected member of Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah — adding another chapter to the Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks. - The Justice Department on Monday charged a former Central Intelligence Agency officer with disclosing classified information to journalists about the capture and brutal interrogation of a suspected member of Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah — adding another chapter to the Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks. Mr. Kiriakou, who was released on a $250,000 bond after appearing in federal court in Alexandria, Va., on Monday, was a leader of the team that captured Abu Zubaydah, and he came to public attention in late 2007 when he gave an interview to ABC News portraying the suffocation technique called waterboarding as torture, but calling it necessary. (It later emerged that he significantly understated the C.I.A.’s use of the technique.) His lawyer did not return a call for comment on Monday.

LA Times: Ex-CIA officer charged with disclosing classified information

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has slammed the United States for a wide range of rights violations in the country, including torture, child labor, overcrowded prisons and a flawed judicial system. - According to a recent report by the New York-based HRW, the US has the largest incarcerated population with some 2.3 million inmates serving time in prisons across the country. American courts sometimes impose very long sentences tainted by racial disparities, the report added. Pointing to the detention of 368,000 immigrants in 2010, the report highlighted the increasing number of non-citizens being held in immigration detention facilities. The HRW criticized Washington's counter-terrorism policies, citing detentions without charge at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and flawed military commissions. The rights group also slammed the effective blockage of any lawsuit seeking redress for torture victims in US custody. In review of the country's cruel punishments, the report finds that there are 34 US states that continue implementing the death penalty, as 39 people were executed in the United States in 2011. The report also examines issues such as poverty and extreme criminal punishments as well as child labor in the United States. Some 46 million Americans live in poverty, the largest number in 52 years.

Two legal rights groups on Thursday asked the United Nations to investigate allegations that Spanish and U.S. officials collaborated to quash criminal probes into whether the Bush administration authorized illegal killings and torture of terrorism suspects. The request, made to the U.N.'s special rapporteur for judicial independence, accused the United States of interfering with Spain's justice system in three different criminal cases. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights asked that the U.N. demand that both governments refrain from meddling in court cases.

Allawi's allegations were the second major broadside this week against detention practices under Maliki, who's been the prime minister since May 2006. London's Guardian newspaper reported Monday on an extortion racket involving Iraqi state security officials who systematically arrest people on trumped-up charges, torture them and then extort bribes from their families for their release. The wave of arrests of Maliki political opponents began in October, around the time it was becoming clear that talks on a continued U.S. presence in Iraq would fail.

A controversial inquiry into allegations of wrongdoing by the UK's security services is being scrapped. - Justice Secretary Ken Clarke said the inquiry into the treatment of detainees could not continue because of a new Metropolitan Police investigation. These follow fresh allegations that officials assisted the rendition of men to Libya, where they were tortured. Mr Clarke said the government was committed to holding a judge-led inquiry once these were investigated. The Detainee Inquiry, headed by retired judge Sir Peter Gibson, was launched by the prime minister to get to the bottom of claims that MI5 and MI6 had aided and abetted the rendition and ill-treatment of terrorism suspects in the wake of 9/11. In July 2010 when he announced the "fully independent" inquiry, David Cameron had said that to ignore the claims of wrongdoing would risk secret operatives' reputation "being tarnished". But the inquiry had been widely criticised by campaign groups and lawyers representing detainees who were refusing to take part, saying it lacked transparency and credibility.

A French judge is seeking U.S. permission to visit the prison camps here to investigate claims by former French inmates that they were tortured, the Associated Press reported from Paris on Tuesday. - The AP reported that it saw a formal international request from investigating judge Sophie Clement to U.S. authorities to see the prison here that Tuesday held 171 captives, none of them French citizens. Clement also seeks copies of all documents relating to the arrest and transfer of three Frenchmen who were held there. The three men are Nizar Sassi, now 31, Mourad Benchellali, now 30, and Khaled Ben Mustapha, now 40. They were arrested on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in late 2001 and transferred to Guantánamo. They were sent back to France in 2004 and 2005, held for a time for trial there, but then released. The men told the judge during questioning in France that they were subject to violence including torture and rape during their detention. At Guantánamo, a Pentagon spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale said it was not immediately known whether U.S. officials had received the request.

Miami Herald: Guantánamo commander: Contractors read inmate lawyers' mail

US President Barack Obama is the target of a suit filed by Pulitzer Prize-winner Hedges, and the reasoning seems more than obvious to him. The decision to take the commander-in-chief to court comes as a response to President Obama’s December 31 signing of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a legislation that allows the US military to detain American citizens indefinitely at off-site torture prisons like Guantanamo Bay. Obama amended the NDAA with a signing statement on New Year's Eve, insisting that while the Act does indeed give him the power to detain his own citizens indefinitely without charge, that doesn’t mean he will do so. Specifically, Obama wrote that his administration “will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.” Under another piece of legislation, however, the government is being granted the right to suspend citizenship of any American if the Enemy Expatriation Act joins the ranks of the NDAA as an atrocious act approved by the president. In his explanation, Hedges says the signing signals “a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.”

“I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge,” writes Hedges. “I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have ‘disappeared’ into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.”

AWIP: Obama’s change: From kidnapping and torture to assassination
AWIP: Obama to approve indefinite detention and torture of Americans
Paul Craig Roberts: The Obama Regime Has No Constitutional Scruples

A Spanish judge on Friday re-launched an investigation into the alleged torture of detainees held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, one day after a British authorities launched a probe into CIA renditions to Libya. - The twin developments demonstrated that while the Obama administration has stuck to its promise not to investigate whether Bush administration officials acted illegally by authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques, other countries are still interested in determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law. In Madrid, Judge Pablo Rafael Ruz Gutierrez handed down a 19-page decision Friday in which he said he would seek additional information — medical data, a translation of a Human Rights Watch report, elaboration on material made public by WikiLeaks, and testimony from three senior U.S. military officers who served at Guantanamo — in the case of four released Guantanamo captives who allege they were humiliated and subjected to torture while in U.S. custody.

The US's Guantanamo Bay is marking its 10th anniversary, despite Obama’s repeated promises to close the infamous prison. Human rights groups and the inmates themselves are organizing events to mark the occasion and respond to the broken promises. - Guantanamo detainees are marking the anniversary of their imprisonment with a peaceful three-day demonstration. Starting on Tuesday some of the prisoners are refusing to return to their cells for the nightly lockdown and are attempting to sleep in the recreation areas, while others are refusing food, the Washington Post reports. Amnesty International staged a demonstration in Brussels on Wednesday marking ten years since the first detainees arrived at Guantanamo Bay. The group placed cut-outs of detainees in their bright orange uniforms in a shopping arcade. Similar protests have taken place in London, Paris, Toronto, Paris and Berlin. A large rally has been organized in front of the White House by a coalition of human rights organizations and activists, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, Witness Against Torture, Amnesty International, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. Following the rally, the demonstrators marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the US Supreme Court, led by 171 people dressed in orange jumpsuits representing the men still detained at Guantanamo. Obama has been criticized for not having a plan on how to close the detention facility, or at least for what to do with terror suspects. The president even signed a new law authorizing the indefinite detention of terror suspects.

Jason Ditz: Gitmo Prison Camp Enters Its Second Decade
Tom Carter: Lawsuit demands that Obama administration release Guantanamo torture tapes

On Wednesday this week, protesters outside the White House in Washington will wage a demonstration ten years to the day after a military prison was opened at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. - For a decade, hundreds of men have been held and tortured without charge in one of the biggest breaches of human rights ever conducted by the American government, and also the largest in recent times internationally. Another anniversary for Gitmo will come later this month, however. In less than two weeks on January 22, Americans will remember the three-year anniversary of US President Barack Obama vowing to shut down the prison — a promise that has still gone unfilled.

The US military has been accused of abuse and torture at its notorious detention center in Afghanistan. Investigators say most detainees at Bagram prison are being held without charge or firm evidence of guilt.

Inmates of the US-run prison outside Bagram Air Base north of Kabul complained of freezing cold, humiliating strip searches and being deprived of light, according to Gul Rahman Qazi, who led an investigation ordered by President Hamid Karzai.

President Karzai ordered the investigative commission to be set up on January 5, after demanding that the US transfer full control over its military prisons to local authorities within a month. "Foreign troops are not allowed to run prisons in Afghanistan, which is sovereign and has its own constitution," Karzai said on Thursday. According to President Karzai, the Bagram prisoners are subject to Guantanamo-like conditions with ''many cases of violations of the Afghan constitution and other applicable laws of the conventions on human rights.” Officially, the detention facility is run by the US and Afghanistan jointly, but local authorities currently control only a small portion of the prison.

Zakariyya Daoud, a former Palestinian political prisoner, who got seriously ill while in Israeli prisons, and was only released on August 22, 2011, died of cancer on Monday, he was diagnosed in prison Israeli prisons and was deprived of the needed and specialized medical attention.

Israel released Daoud, 43, after he spent nine years out of a 16-year sentence due to the ongoing decline in his health condition. He is a father of four children; Ahmad, 19, Wisal, 20, Malak, 14, and Dalal, 13, the Maan News Agency reported. He was kidnapped and imprisoned by Israel on February 10th, 2003, the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) reported. The PPS said that Zakariyya had cancer that spread in his body due to the lack of specialized medical treatment in Israeli prisons.

PIC: Center: Death of Issa proves Israel’s criminal practices against prisoners

The promise to scrap his predecessor’s hardliner war-on-terror policies, which helped Barack Obama win presidential election, is apparently off the table. The political reality is that the current administration is doing quite the opposite thing.

Long before he became US president or the winner of a Noble Peace Prize, Barack Obama was a constitutional law professor. During his election campaign he vowed to reverse the abuses and policies of his predecessor George W. Bush. Three years later, many civil rights advocates, who once cheered “yes, we can,” are finding themselves disillusioned.

“Not only has the Obama administration blocked torture accountability and refused to investigate and prosecute. He has basically maintained indefinite detention. He has revived military commissions. As well he has expanded targeted killings – they’ve increased under the Obama administration manifold, and he’s even authorized the killing of a US citizen,” explains Maria LaHood from the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Russia Today: ‘Obama just didn’t have the balls to follow with the right thing’

No doubt you've heard the adage: a picture is worth a thousand words. A picture of 62-year-old Nick Christie could be worth thousands of dollars when a jury sees it. The photo shows the Ohio man restrained inside the Lee County Jail with his body covered in pepper spray. "This photo is a picture of a man who is strapped to a chair naked inside a jail for hours with a hood over his face. That evokes thoughts of being tortured," says Cleveland-based lawyer Nick DiCello who represents the Christie family. The photo, which was obtained by FOX 13's investigative unit, was taken in the final hours of Christie's life.

Legislation that will let President Obama and future leaders of America detain and torture Americans indefinitely has made it to the White House, where it is expected to be soon signed into law by the commander-in-chief. - The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, of NDAA FY2012, was overwhelmingly approved by the House and Senate earlier this month. While the legislation indeed had its critics, the act was inexplicably missed by the mainstream media, who neglected to inform Americans of the dangerous blows to constitutional rights that will become a reality under the law. The bill, which is annually updated to outline spending for the Department of Defense, contains several provisions for 2012 that will turn America, as Senator Lindsey Graham puts it, “into a battlefield.” As the US continues an open-ended war on terror, now American citizens suspected to be linked to terrorist enemies can be detained in prison indefinitely and subjected to torture tactics previously outlawed.

الثّوّار يصوّرون القذّافي عاريا تماما

When the commander-in-chief inks his name to NDAA FY2012, Americans can be on their way to the same torture cells that have kept al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked terrorists for the last decade. It’s now been revealed, however, that US citizens and anyone suspected of a crime against America can be sent all over the world. - If you’re upset that congressional approval of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 can send you away to military prisons and be tortured in America, don’t worry — it could be worse. The US could send you somewhere else. No, really. They could. And they can. Anywhere else, too. Really. While the bill that left Capitol Hill last week and awaits authorization from US President Barack Obama allows for the United States to indefinitely detain and torture American citizens suspected of aiding enemy forces, one provision in the bill specifies that that detention doesn’t necessarily have to occur domestically — nor does it have to be in a foreign prison run by the US.

The British government has asked Washington to hand over a man held by US forces in Afghanistan after the appeal court ordered a writ of habeas corpus be issued seven years after he was detained. The court ordered the writ last week after hearing that Yunus Rahmatullah was detained by UK special forces in Iraq in 2004, and then handed over to US forces who flew him to Bagram prison, north of Kabul. The court heard on Wednesday that the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence had asked the US government to transfer Rahmatullah to British custody so that he could be released. However, the US defence department replied three days later that the responsible official "is currently on travel", and that it would respond at some unspecified date in the future.

John Glaser: Britain Asks US to Hand Over Bagram Detainee

London/Madrid, 19 December 2011 - Just days after new details emerged of a secret CIA prison in Romania used to torture terrorism suspects, a report by two international human rights organisations shows that many European countries are suppressing evidence of their role in the USA’s notorious rendition programme.

The report, Rendition on Record, produced by open government specialists Access Info Europe and legal action charity Reprieve reveals how 28 countries have responded to a total of 67 requests for information about specific rendition flights carried out between 2002 and 2006. While six European countries and the USA responded by releasing data, 16 others have either refused or failed to respond to questions about their complicity in the CIA’s illegal detention operations. The European air traffic management body Eurocontrol also refused on the grounds that it has no transparency obligations to the public.

CIA Special Review
Read the Rendition on Record report
Access Info Europe - Information Request from September [Norway]
Finnish report on suspected CIA extraordinary rendition flight leaves many open questions [Finland, html]

The attack by Egypt's army against the Occupy Cabinet protest has left 9 dead and 340 injured; military seizes area surrounding cabinet headquarters and Tahrir Square. - Health ministry reports nine deaths and around 344 injuries since the bebinning of military attack on protesters sitting in at Cabinet headquarters in Cairo in the early hours of Friday morning. Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri, recently appointed by Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is addressing the nation in response to the violence. He defends that no one can tell how the violence actually erupted. Clashes between army soldiers and Cabinet protesters wound down Saturday morning as the army forcefully dispersed the roughly three-week-long sit-in at the Cabinet headquarters.

Christian Science Monitor: Egypt clashes kill 10, undermine Army narrative of democratic transition

Johannes Stern: Egyptian military cracks down on peaceful protesters - Over the weekend, the US-backed military junta in Egypt launched another deadly crackdown on peaceful protesters, killing at least nine and wounding hundreds. The brutal assault on protesters comes amidst ongoing parliamentary elections, highlighting again the fraudulent character of the elections and the entire “democratic transition” being carried out under the junta’s control.

The US government has made an example of Bradley Manning to prevent others from challenging the American empire. - Private Bradley Manning was just 22 years old when he allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of US State Department cables and video evidence of war crimes to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. For that act of courage that revealed to the world the true face of the American empire, he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison. After waiting more than 18 months, half of which he spent in torturous solitary confinement that he was only removed from after an international outcry and the resignation of a top State Department official, Manning is finally getting a shot at justice - if we can think of a military court as justice - when his case moves to the pre-trial hearing phase this Friday. But whether Manning is ultimately found guilty or not is beside the point: All one needs to know about American justice is that if he had murdered civilians and desecrated their corpses - if he had the moral capacity to commit war crimes, not the audacity to expose them - he'd be better off today. Indeed, if Manning had merely murdered the nameless, faceless "other", as his Army colleagues on the notorious Afghan "Kill Team" did, he would not have had his right to a speedy trial blatantly violated. If Manning had intentionally killed unarmed civilians, posed for pictures with their dead bodies and slashed their fingers off as souvenirs, he would not have had his guilt publicly pronounced by his own commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama, months before he so much as saw the inside of a military court. If he had killed poor foreigners instead of exposing their deaths, he might even stand a chance of getting out of prison while still a young man.

Jason Ditz: Bradley Manning Hearing Finally Begins

Exactly 220 years to the date after the Bill of Rights was ratified, the US Senate today voted 86 to 13 in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, allowing the indefinite detention and torture of Americans. - After a back-and-forth in recent days between both the Senate and House yielded intense criticism from Americans attempting to hold onto their Constitutional rights, NDAA FY2012 is now on its way to the White House, where yesterday the Obama administration revealed that the president would not veto the legislation, cancelling out a warning he offered less than a month earlier. Obama has finally brought about change to America, but it’s nothing to be hopeful about.

John Glaser: Congress Passes Defense Bill Codifying Indefinite Detention
Stephen Lendman: Obama Approves Draconian Police State Law
Paul Craig Roberts: We Have a Republican Party That Is a Gestapo Party - Video [December 3, 2011]
Andrew P. Napolitano: The Government as Lawbreaker, Again
Elite Multimedia: 40 Members of Congress Protest ‘Indefinite Detention’ Bill

In addition to kidnapping Americans and tossing them into Camp Gitmo without recourse or trial, the draconian NDAA bill passed in the House yesterday contains language that will allow the Pentagon to wage cyberwar on domestic enemies of the state. - In July, the Pentagon released its cybersecurity plan. It declared the internet a domain of war but did not specify how the military would use it for offensive strikes. The report claimed that hostile parties “are working to exploit DOD unclassified and classified networks, and some foreign intelligence organizations have already acquired the capacity to disrupt elements of DOD’s information infrastructure.” In addition, according to the Pentagon, “non-state actors increasingly threaten to penetrate and disrupt DOD networks and systems.”

Transcripts of military interviews from the investigation into the Haditha massacre were found [in/at a] trailer in a junkyard in Baghdad, which specializes in selling trailers and office supplies left over from American military base closings. - The 400 pages of interrogations, once closely guarded as secrets of war, were supposed to have been destroyed as the last American troops prepare to leave Iraq. Instead, they were discovered along with reams of other classified documents, including military maps showing helicopter routes and radar capabilities, by a reporter for The New York Times at a junkyard outside Baghdad. An attendant was burning them as fuel to cook a dinner of smoked carp. The documents — many marked secret — form part of the military’s internal investigation, and confirm much of what happened at Haditha, a Euphrates River town where Marines killed 24 Iraqis, including a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, women and children, some just toddlers. Haditha became a defining moment of the war, helping cement an enduring Iraqi distrust of the United States and a resentment that not one Marine has been convicted.

Not that anyone with half a brain would think otherwise, but here it is; the proof that the Obama Administration has NO INTENTION of vetoing the Indefinite Detention Bill now ready to pass in the next few days. In fact, it was the Obama Administration that SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED the portion that allows combat status to be applied to American citizens be included in the language of the bill! This is no joke, folks! This is not the time to play around, to over-rationalize, or to shrug off the consequences. This-is-happening! The end of Constitutional protections as we know them...

Russia Today: Obama insists on indefinite detention of Americans

Congress is on the verge of passing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with detention provisions that would violate human rights and undermine the rule of law. These provisions would keep Guantanamo open, continue and possibly expand the use of indefinite detention, hinder fair trials and mandate military custody for some terror suspects. President Obama has threatened to veto the legislation over the detention provisions. Urge him to follow through on the veto of the NDAA—or any other legislation that would violate human rights -- and on his promise to close Guantanamo and uphold human rights. Read More.

After six decades of waiting, relatives of men killed in a notorious massacre during Indonesia's bitter struggle for independence finally got what they wanted: an official apology from the Dutch state. - Tjeerd de Zwaan, ambassador to Indonesia, apologized on his country's behalf Friday before hundreds of villagers in Rawagede, scene of the Dec. 9, 1947 killings of up to 430 boys and young men by Dutch troops. The crowd, tense with emotion, erupted in cheers and applause. Tears rolled down the cheeks of surviving widows, now in their late 80s and early 90s, some of whom had doubted they would ever hear those words. "It makes me feel my struggle for justice was not useless," said Cawi binti Baisa, who was 20 when her husband of two years headed to the rice paddy in the morning never to return. Dutch troops clinging to their retreating colonial empire arrived in Rawagede just before dawn 64 years ago and opened fire, sending sleepy residents scattering from their homes in panic.

[Editor's Comment:] And now for the United States...and Israel.

Though the existence of a secret CIA prison somewhere in Romania has been a fairly widely recognized fact for years, its exact location and use remained a secret. Until now. - The prison, codenamed “Bright Light,” [sic!] was operated int he basement of a Romania government building in northern Bucharest. The prison was one of several “black sites” operated by the CIA in which to disappear captives. The Romanian government termed the basement “the most secure room in all of Romania” but said they didn’t believe it was a prison.

Executions of Sirte - Video shows Libyans alive, photos show them dead

An Australian man has been sentenced to 500 lashes and a year in prison in Saudi Arabia for breaking the country's strict blasphemy laws during a Haj pilgrimage last month. - Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs said it was very concerned about the well-being of the man, named in media reports as Mansor Almaribe, a 45-year-old father of five. "The Australian Government has a universal policy of condemning the use of corporal punishment amounting to torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," a spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said in a statement. (The sentence comes a day after a Chinese court sentenced an Australian businessman to 13 years in prison for fraud in a case that raised fresh foreign concerns about China's murky legal system.)

The Guardian: Australian sentenced to 500 lashes in Saudi Arabia for blasphemy

Everything you ever wanted to know about the official 9/11 conspiracy theory in under 5 minutes.

Next week, as the country’s Christmastime frenzy is in full swing, a 24-year-old American Army private will be on trial for his very life. - His supporters say “we are all Bradley Manning,” and perhaps they are right. His first hearing since he was arrested in May 2010 and put in military custody takes place on the heels of a Senate vote last week that would give the military the ability to detain anyone on domestic soil suspected of loosely defined connections to terror — even American citizens — without hearing or trial. Though the president has promised to veto the measure, if it stands, Americans could find themselves sitting in a cell one day on the military’s timetable, their constitutional rights in question. The difference here is that Manning is a soldier in the U.S. Army and his case is being tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He faces 22 charges for accessing a database of more than 250,000 classified U.S. government documents from a military computer and passing them on to WikiLeaks, which has been publishing the documents for over a year through mainstream media outlets. The most damning and embarrassing documents include the “Collateral Murder” video, the Afghanistan war logs, the Iraq war logs, and the Guantanamo files.

BBC: Julian Assange wins right to pursue extradition fight

Barbarism, inhumanity, war crimes... [Video source]

Kelly Ayotte, a freshman Republican senator from New Hampshire, has proposed legislation that would repeal current laws that make harsh torture techniques illegal, a move that the American Civil Liberties Union says would "dangerously roll back" restrictions that Congress approved in 2005’s McCain Anti-Torture Amendment.

Ayotte’s amendment, snuck into the Defense Authorization bill that will soon go up for vote, would cancel in-part both the 2005 legislation and the 2009 Executive Order issued by President Obama that allowed only “lawful” interrogations. Additionally, officials would draft a list of top-secret techniques that would be used to interrogate suspected terrorists and war criminals. The ACLU reminds lawmakers of the photos from the Abu Gharib that caused international outrage over America’s torture and interrogation abuses, which it says cost the United States “hearts and minds that are critical to US counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts.” While the amendment has a worthy opponent in the ACLU, contenders for the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidency have also gone on the record as of late to say that current torture policies are too lax. Michele Bachmann stated recently that the “CIA has no ability to have any form of interrogation for terrorists,” and declared that President Obama had forfeited its ability to torture alleged criminals by siding with the ACLU. Texas Governor Rick Perry has added that the Obama administration has been an “absolute failure” at expanding intelligence gathering amongst the military and CIA.

Andrew P. Napolitano: Can Congress Steal Your Constitutional Freedoms? - Can the president use the military to arrest anyone he wants, keep that person away from a judge and jury, and lock him up for as long as he wants? In the Senate’s dark and terrifying vision of the Constitution, he can.

According to Bradley Manning’s lawyer David E. Coombs, the US government is deliberately withholding evidence that the defense has requested during discovery, including evidence that could be favorable to Manning’s case. - According to Coombs, this includes internal government reports which contradict one another about the leaks and reports which were never released but publicly downplayed the “damage” done by the leaks Manning is accused of. The later could be used to prevent the government’s witnesses from claiming the damage was broader than the official reports indicate.

A U.N. report on Monday detailed lack of due process, torture, and other ill treatment for thousands of mostly black Africans.

Former Libyan fighters are still holding about 7,000 people without charge or trial, some of whom have been subjected to torture and ill treatment, according to a U.N. report Monday. The report by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was made public before a Security Council briefing on Libya and says that inmates are not being afforded rights to due process as the country still does not have a functioning judicial system. A large share of those detained are black African migrants, rounded up in the summer and early fall by Libyan fighters accusing them of being mercenaries for former ruler Muammar Gadhafi. Reports came out at the time of beatings, mass arrests, torture, and massive makeshift jails.

30 martyrs fell today, shot dead by security forces and the army of regime, including 5 children, 22-martyrs in Homs, 3 martyrs in Hama, 2 martyrs in Deir Al-Zour, and a martyr each Damascus Suburbs (Knaker) and Idleb.

Peter Eyre: Syria is fast becoming another Libyan style US – UK – France “False Flag”

Russia Today: Regime change: the 21st century energy source - The US and Europe are to hammer out harsh penalties for Syria and Iran at a joint summit in Washington on Monday, but their objectives are being widely seen as far from democratic. The summit comes as the US and Europe seek new ways to strengthen their global position, with the two Arab countries proving a tempting source of fortification as hawks call for regime change in one nation and a megaton of discipline in the other. Observers believe European politicians are joining with the US president in turning tensions around Syria and Iran to economic gain. After all, the decision on whether or not to meddle in a foreign country’s affairs is never entirely selfless. Looking at Iran, for example, a country with vast natural resources, it is not hard to see the benefits of such a venture. Iran is the world’s third-largest oil exporter. It is second in gas reserves. And the US is not getting any of the Iranian oil.

American civil rights activists have censured the country's senate for seeking to allow the military to imprison American citizens without bringing a charge against them. - American rights activists have slammed the US Senate for gearing up to vote on a bill on Monday that would define the whole of the United States as a 'battlefield' and allow the military to arrest American citizens in their own back yard without charge or trial. The reactions comes after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said last week that “the senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president-and every future president - the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even US citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.”

Stephen Lendman: Indefinite Domestic Military Detentions

Thousands of people, including women and children, are being illegally detained by rebel militias in Libya, according to a report by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Many of the prisoners are suffering torture and systematic mistreatment while being held in private jails outside the control of the country's new government. The document, seen by The Independent, states that while political prisoners being held by the Gaddafi regime have been released, their places have been taken by up to 7,000 new “enemies of the state”, "disappeared" in a dysfunctional system, with no recourse to the law. The report will come as uncomfortable reading for the Western governments, including Britain, which backed the campaign to oust Gaddafi. A UN resolution was secured in March in order to protect civilians from abuses by the regime, which was at the time mercilessly suppressing the uprising against the Gaddafi regime.

Dan Kovalik: NATO's Great Victory: Destroying Libya’s Welfare State

The trial has just started of three of Pol Pot’s top lieutenants who were complicit in the killing of 2 million people. The court heard how a man’s stomach was cut open and his entrails and liver removed while still alive, and how women were forced to marry men chosen by touching hands in the dark. - The Khmer Rouge Tribunal resumed yesterday, with three surviving leaders of Pol Pot’s regime confronting the UN-endorsed court for crimes against humanity. The start of Case 002 was low key compared with the first trial, which resulted in the conviction of death camp chief Kaing Guek Eav, also known as “Duch”. However, opening arguments presented before the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts in Cambodia (ECCC) were startling, with prosecutors focusing on the immediate forced evacuation of Phnom Penh and urban centers around the country after the Khmer Rouge seized control in April 1975.

Defense Against the Psychopath (Full length Version)

Lawyers representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, say authorities at the military base have begun reading privileged attorney-client communication — in a sharp break with past practice[?]. Legal mail is the principal means of communication between detainees charged in military commissions and their military defense attorneys,who are based in the Washington area. - In a letter Tuesday, nine of the attorneys wrote to William K. Lietzau, deputy assistant secretary of defense for rule of law and detainee policy, to object to authorities reading their mail to clients at the detention center. They asked that the commander at Guantanamo Bay be ordered to “cease and desist the seizure, opening, translating, reading and reviewing of attorney-client privileged communications.” A military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, said that privileged mail between attorneys and their clients has always been clearly marked as such.

The number of martyrs today, thus far, is 22. Among them were two women and a child. 15 of the martyrs were in Homs, 4 in the Hama suburbs, and 1 in Deir Ezzor, 1 Raqqa and 1 in Idlib: Names of the dead.

Since the Arab League Peace Plan was announces till this moment 376 Syrian were killed by the Security forces and the Asad Army amongst them are 26 children and today the number of martyrs rose to 20 up till now. 11 martyrs in Homs, 7 martyrs in Idlib and 1 martyrs in each Daraa and Damascus suburbs. Homs: Baba Amro: the five-year-old child Mu'tassem Bargouth was killed at his home. Idlib: Mastouma: injury of an eight-year-old child after the regime army shelled a residential house. Heavy fire shooting by machine guns is still occuring downtown. Hama: heavy fire shooting in Qusour neighborhood in the direction of residential houses. Explosions are occuring at most of the check-points and more particularly at Assad compound and Falat roundabout. Heavy fire shooting in Manakh neighborhood and at Bilal roundabout. Aleppo: Bab: fire shooting sounds in Mahlaq (at the junction of Jabal hospital) accompanied by a heavy security presence, a significant circulation of ambulances and heavy fire shooting in Jabal al Sheikh Aqeel. Lattakia: A demonstration took off in the neighbourhood of Bustan Al-Seidawi praising the Arab League's decision to send international observers and chanting for toppling of the regime. Idlib: Mastouma: heavy fire shooting targeting the inhabitants' homes. Mortar sounds are heard downtown where five tanks, twenty armored vehicles, thirty buses and more than twenty-five cars of Shabiha were deployed. deployed.

Stephen Lendman: America's Media War on Syria

Last week, Guantánamo briefly resurfaced in the news when one of the remaining 171 prisoners, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was arraigned for his planned trial by Military Commission, for his alleged role in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. - Al-Nashiri’s trial will not begin for a least a year, and his fleeting appearance was not sufficient to keep attention focused on Guantánamo, especially as the 24-hour news cycle — and people’s addiction to it — now barely allows stories to survive for a day before they are swept aside for the latest breaking news. As a result, the opportunity to ask bigger questions, such as, "Who is still at Guantánamo?" and "Why are they still held?" was largely missed. These are topics I have been discussing all year, but they are rarely mentioned in the mainstream media, so it was refreshing, last week, to see Peter Finn in the Washington Post address these questions.

Accused of giving classified material to WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning has now been in pre-trial confinement for 560 days. He has been exposed to harsh conditions while in custody, including solitary confinement and forced nudity. Rights groups like Amnesty International and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture have drawn attention to Manning’s case and treatment – and the arrest of three activists protesting in support of Manning has drawn additional attention – but the U.S. government still has not set a date for Manning’s trial.