WAR ON TERROR

IMMUNITY FROM WAR CRIMES

“What are we becoming?”

Asked Jack Cafferty, CNN´s Weekend Business show anchor, after The US House passed yesterday afternoon the legislation that includes a war crimes immunity clause.

As stated in my first comment on this blog, this bill for freely detaining and interrogating terrorist suspects imply:

ENEMY COMBATS: Summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal of foreign citizens living in their own country (man!).

THE GENEVA COVENTIONS: Abusive interrogation methods whenever the President considers them to be needed (shit!).

HABEAS CORPUS: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment (F…!)

JUDICIAL REVIEW: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this system: anyone could be locked up forever if declared illegal combatant by the President.

COERCED EVIDENCE: CE would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable and relevant. In this moment I remember Kristen Breitweiser (one of the Jersey girls) referring to this point in an interview yesterday: “what we know is when you torture people to that degree, they´ll tell you anything”.

SECRET EVIDENCE: The evidence and testimony can be kept secret from the defendant.

OFFENSES: Rape and sexual assault are defined as forced activities.

Source: NYT


This was Cafferty´s comment on CNN´s “The Cafferty file”:

“President Bush is trying to pardon himself. Here’s the deal: Under the War Crimes Act, violations of the Geneva Conventions are felonies, in some cases punishable by death. When the Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Convention applied to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, President Bush and his boys were suddenly in big trouble. They’ve been working these prisoners over pretty good. In an effort to avoid possible prosecution they’re trying to cram this bill through Congress before the end of the week before Congress adjourns. The reason there’s such a rush to do this? If the Democrats get control of the House in November this kind of legislation probably wouldn’t pass.”