you will not leave this place innocent

[solarbird]

Nothing below the line in this post is mine; I'm copying it over because most of you won't click through this link for the whole thing, tho' you should, for the complete post.

---

They Tortured A Man They Knew To Be Innocent, Ctd.

A reader writes:

As a trial attorney with the Department of Justice, I am familiar with the al-Rabiah case (however, to be clear, I am not a trial attorney who worked on the case). My opinions... are not the opinions of the Department. I write for myself and myself alone. ... The conclusion drawn by... my colleagues – some of whom are liberal Democrats, some of whom are conservative, law-and-order Republicans – is, to a person, that the detention and interrogation programs the United States implemented in the months and years following 9/11 is not only a complete abrogation and violation of international law and, in many cases, federal law – it is also fundamentally immoral. We also agree that the al-Rabiah case is by far the most egregious yet to come to light. To repeat: yet to come to light...

...I am surprised you did not highlight... the single most horrifying passage from the Court’s decision. It was the Court’s quotation of something an interrogator said to al-Rabiah during his interrogation...:

"There is nothing against you. But there is no innocent person here. So, you should confess to something so you can be charged and sentenced and serve your sentence and then go back to your family and country, because you will not leave this place innocent."

This was an agent of the United States saying this.

This was not a statement pulled from the transcripts of the Nuremburg trials, nor archival evidence taken from reports smuggled out of one of Stalin’s gulags. This was a statement made by an agent of this government less than 7 years ago to a detainee...

But even worse – far worse – is the fact that the government would nevertheless still seek to convict based on the resulting confession.

To those of us who read that passage and who vowed and make it our vocation to serve and protect the Constitution of the United States, that fact is a gut-punch. For me and my colleagues, it literally took our breath away. It makes one wonder how far down into the abyss we have allowed ourselves to drop. And whether there is the political will to find our way out.

It took my breath away as well. I used to wonder how democracies became tyrannies. I know now. Because good men like Obama do nothing.

---

Comments

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

"that the detention and interrogation programs the United States implemented in the months and years following 9/11 is not only a complete abrogation and violation of international law and, in many cases, federal law – it is also fundamentally immoral."

It doesn't take a genius to see that. It was clear from the beginning, when we grabbed a man off the streets of Sydney, Australia, who was guilty of nothing more than not liking us. (He was later released in the dead of night only because he had a tenacious family and lawyer.)

Then there were all the people "sold" to American forces because the "seller" didn't like the guy, or wanted his land or his life.

The way we handled this travesty has only made it uglier, and made us look like a bunch of jack-booted thugs.

I've longed called for the arrest and conviction of everyone involved - not just Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, but Yoo, Addington and every other member of the Bush Team involved. (And they were all involved.)

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Do you have a direct link to the court transcript?

[solarbird]

Yeah, I linked to it in the previous, but here the link is in plaintext:

http://www.pillsburylaw.com/siteFiles/News/1259B22146574C540A8871C2C3131CA2.pdf

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I cannot help but think of Ken MacLeod saying (http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2005/05/delenda-est-im-actually-shaking-after.html)

You know how this stuff ends? It ends with your cities in rubble, your capital occupied, and your leaders hanged.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that quote has occurred to me a few times. I've been following this through Sully and Attackerman, and damn if it doesn't make me furious.

[solarbird]

And yet, nothing will happen, will it?

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

King James had better rules of evidence for his witch hunters.

[brombear.livejournal.com]

I'm really disgusted from that...and the really sickening part is that these...people...are going to cloak themselves in legal jargon, hide behind mountains of paperwork and are going to walk away scott free because "They're the Government."

[maellenkleth]

Uggh.