24 March 2010

Change We Can't Believe In: No Prosecution of War Criminals, DoJ Harrassment of Defense Lawyers

In an attempt to provide evidence of torture, attorneys defending detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere, have been providing pictures of likely torturers to their clients for identification, and Eric Holder has decided to criminally investigate the attorneys for doing their jobs:
In a case that has all the ingredients to explode into a national controversy, Attorney General Eric Holder has appointed star prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate whether laws were broken after "paparazzi style" photographs of CIA officers were found in the cell of a Guantanamo inmate accused of financing the 9/11 attacks, Newsweek is reporting.

In an interview with TPMmuckraker, the top official for the ACLU project that provided assistance for the defense of the detainee in question -- and hired private investigators to take the photos of CIA officers thought to be involved in torture -- said that no laws had been broken.
Note that if someone wants to claim that their confession was the product of torture, it's essential for a competent defense.

They need to know who these people are and to be able to cross examine them, so as to determine the nature of their treatment, and so the admissibility of their statements.

And still Yoo and Bybee walk free.

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