Civil liberties - new material (51)
01 August 2003
"Killing you is a very easy thing for us": Human Rights Abuses in Southeast Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch vol. 15 no. 05 (c) (July) 2003, pp. 104 This report, based on field research conducted from January to June 2003, concludes that "warlords and military commanders are becoming more and more entrenched" in post-war Afghanistan. If this situation is "allowed to continue with impunity, these abuses will make it impossible for Afghans to create a modern, democratic state." The organisation highlights three main types of abuse: "violent criminal offences - armed robbery, extortion and kidnappings - committed by troops, police and intelligence agents; governmental attacks on the media and political actors; and violations of the human rights of women and girls." The report blames the US government, which "has done much to entrench the warlords responsible for the worst abuses" and other key UN member states, "particularly those of the European Union and Afghan neighbours" for "failing to expand international peacekeeping forces beyond Kabul to problematic areas." Available from Human Rights Watch, 350 Fifth Avenue 34th Floor, New York, NY 10118-3299, U.S.A. http://www.hrw.org
"The US army wants to execute my boy". Socialist Worker 19.7.03, p. 5. Interview with Azmat Begg, the father of Moazzam Begg, one of two British prisoners interned without trial in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who face US kangaroo court justice. He accuses the "prime minister of abandoning people who have done nothing, and who would be freed by courts in this country."
The road to war, Robin Cook. Sunday Times News Review 5.10.03 Extracted from former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook’s diaries, this article reports his claim that Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, privately conceded, two weeks before the invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein did not have any weapons of mass destruction. Cook also says that the chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC), John Scarlett, agreed that Saddam had no such weapons. Cook writes: "I had now expressed that view [that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction] to both the chairman of the JIC and to the prime minister and both had assented in it."
Military Justice? The proposed us of US military commissions to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Clair Physsas. British Institute of Human Rights Newsletter Autumn 2003, pp.2-3. This article concludes that "The.. proposed military commissions appear to be less tribunals of law than a series of procedural formalities, particularly since the higher echelons of the US government have already concluded that the detainees are terrorists. The risk of verdicts being of a political nature reinforces the need for judicial oversight by civilian courts. The sanctioning by the UK and other governments of the use of such courts without guarantees of full due process would not only set a dangerous precedent for other states to follow, but would be a travesty of justice."