Gavin’s Gaily Gigest

The “trial” of Osama Bin Laden’s driver*, Salim Hamdan, started last week and the New York Times brings the world an excellent summary of what’s going on behind the almost closed door of the Guantanamo “courtroom”**:
The interrogations of Mr. Hamdan have caused him to sometimes think the trial is just another method of interrogation, a [...]

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Binyam Mohamed, the last British man left in the US’s terrorist holiday camp in Cuba*, is asking the UK if they wouldn’t mind awfully providing him with the evidence that he has been a victim of torture and extraordinary rendition**.
Mr Mohamed needs this evidence so that he can defend himself in a prosecution before [...]

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Amnesty are getting quite good at this video malarkey. Hot on the heels of their fantastic and disturbing waterboarding cinema advert, comes this:

(Hat-tip: Pickled Politics)
Find out more here.

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Amnesty International has a new cinema advert out today: an ode to water it would seem, part of their unsubscribe campaign.

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I may possibly have mentioned the Yoo Torture Memo earlier this week* – the legal advice which allowed the US military to torture prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Philippe Sands, in an article for Vanity Fair this month, reveals the effect of the approved interrogation techniques on just [...]

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The New York Times reports that the infamous CIA torture memo (narrowly redefining torture to the point of almost irrelevance) was mirrored in the advice tendered to the US military which probably applied until 2005. The Times:

“The memorandum gave the military broad latitude to use harsh interrogation methods. It reasoned that federal laws prohibiting assault [...]

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Sometimes you’ve got to laugh or you’ll cry and then go into a deep funk filled with moments of suicidal depression. These words of wisdom come from Professor John Smith, a retired US Air Force captain, who treated a former guard at the US’s notorious Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba (as reported by the [...]

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After yesterday’s confession, comes the political analysis and reaction from Anthony Barnett of Our Kingdom, reminding us that the UK soil in question, Diego Garcia, has also been home to other human rights abuses:
"It is appalling and shameful but believable that senior front-benchers preparing for Question Time never asked whether there are any British troops [...]

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I’m not the biggest fan of rendition, extraordinary or otherwise,which is why I’m disappointed by today’s announcement by Foreign Secretary David Miliband that the UK has been complicit, albeit seemingly not knowingly, in the practice, by allowing two flights carrying detained persons to refuel at the British dependent territory of Diego Garcia.
For those uninitiated in [...]

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Extract from a memo written in 2002, regarding the US government’s use of torture in interrogations:

Yes, that’s right America, you’re not allowed to know what it is your President can and cannot do. Perfectly good reason I should imagine – if you found out you probably wouldn’t vote for him. But still, thanks for playing.
And [...]

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