Spanish judge opens probe into Guantanamo torture

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2009-04-29 17:34.
Criminal Prosecution and AccountabilityEurope

By AFP

MADRID (AFP) — A Spanish judge on Wednesday opened an investigation into an alleged “systematic programme” of torture at the US Guantanamo Bay detention camp, following accusations by four former prisoners.

Judge Baltasar Garzon will probe the “perpetrators, the instigators, the necessary collaborators and accomplices” to crimes of torture at the prison at the US naval base in southern Cuba, he said in his ruling, a copy of which was seen by AFP.

The judge based his decision on statements by Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, known as the “Spanish Taliban” and three other former Guantanamo detainees — a Moroccan, a Palestinian and a Libyan.

US interpreter who witnessed torture in Iraq shot herself with service rifle

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

David Randall

Alyssa Peterson was reprimanded for ‘showing empathy’ towards prisoners

April 28, 2009 It is possible that one of the victims of the United States’ torture policy is a young, devout Mormon woman from Arizona called Alyssa Peterson. She was a soldier who not only saw the rough interrogation methods that the US military used on Iraqi prisoners, but was deeply troubled by them. Some weeks after formally protesting about them to her superiors, and asking to be reassigned, she took her gun and killed herself. The cause of her death was kept secret for two years, and the mystery of what Peterson witnessed, and the content of the notes she made, still goes on. It was in September 2003 at Tal-Afar air base, northern Iraq, that Specialist Peterson, serving with a military intelligence section of the 101st Airborne, came across interrogation methods very different from the ones she had known in training. An Arab-speaker, Peterson was assigned to work as an interpreter at interrogation sessions in a unit known as “The Cage”. After only two nights, she refused to take further part in the sessions and was reassigned. Then, on 15 September, she shot herself with her service rifle. A notebook recording her thoughts was found by her body. Its contents were blanked out in the subsequent official report.

The issue of Racism between Zionism and the Apartheid ideology

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Salim Nazzal

April 28, 2009 This is a quick and generalized paper, which gives evidences of which might explain why the Zionist regime has been more capable of resisting the pressures of the culture of human rights and self determination while the apartheid regimes have vanished. Despite the similarities between the white Racist regime, in earlier South Africa and those of the Zionist regime, in terms of the oppressive policy against the natives, there are seven major differences: the first, white Europeans immigrated to Africa without a prior plan to the country and to the natives. Their immigration was rather spontaneous, guided by wide colonial thought rather than of a well theorized racist ideology decided from before. The construction of the racist regime was done through a process in the history of their domination there. Zionists arrived in Palestine from day one armed with comprehensible ideology, unambiguous policy, from which its aims were to transfer Palestinians.