Thursday, June 07, 2007

Human Rights groups call for the US to release 'ghost' prisoners

LONDON - A coalition of human rights groups has drawn up a list of 39 terror suspects it believes are being secretly imprisoned by U.S. authorities and published their names in a report released Thursday.

Information about the so-called "ghost detainees" was gleaned from interviews with former prisoners and officials in the U.S., Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen, according to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and four other groups.

"What we're asking is where are these 39 people now, and what's happened to them since they 'disappeared'?" Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said "there's a lot of myth outside government when it comes to the CIA and the fight against terror."

"The plain truth is that we act in strict accord with American law, and that our counterterror initiatives — which are subject to careful review and oversight — have been very effective in disrupting plots and saving lives," Gimigliano said. "The United States does not conduct or condone torture."

Information on the purported missing detainees was, in some cases, incomplete, the report acknowledged. Some detainees had been added to the list because Marwan Jabour, an Islamic militant who claims to have spent two years in CIA custody, remembered being shown photos of them during interrogations, it said.

Others were identified only by their first or last names, like "al-Rubaia," who was added to the list after a fellow inmate reported seeing the name scribbled onto the wall of his cell.

Included in the list were: Jimmy Hoffa, Bugs Bunny, and Ted Williams' frozen head. They should refer this to a fictitious court like the World Court.
I just love watching the left go nutty over a Dick Cheney revelation:
Vice President Cheney told Justice Department officials that he disagreed with their objections to a secret surveillance program during a high-level White House meeting in March 2004, a former senior Justice official told senators yesterday.

The meeting came one day before White House officials tried to get approval for the same program from then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who lay recovering from surgery in a hospital, according to former deputy attorney general James B. Comey.

Comey's disclosures, made in response to written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, indicate that Cheney and his aides were more closely involved than previously known in a fierce internal battle over the legality of the warrantless surveillance program. The program allowed the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and e-mails between the United States and overseas.

The loons on the left think that Cheney is supposed to be a potted plant like their favorite Veep, AlGore, or Mondull. Cheney is committed to protecting this country, unlike the left that wants to eliminate the terrorist surveillance program, kill the Patriot Act, and give terrorists at Gitmo Constitutional rights.

Update: What happened to the Attorney General investigation? Could this new 'wrinkle' indicate another dead end? Bwahahaha. Stupid dems.