The Italian Constitutional Court has ruled that prosecutors violated “state secrecy laws” in building their case against Italian and U.S. agents who are accused of extraordinary rendition of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, aka Abu Omar.
Though the case has not been thrown out it has set back the case which resumes hearing on March 18, 2009. The case claims that the CIA led team kidnapped Abu Omar in Milan and took him to US bases in Italy and Germany before they flew him to Egypt in 2003. Abu Omar says he was tortured there and held without being charged.
The court ruled that the prosecutors improperly used classified secrets to prepare their case. Much of the indictment rests on the “secrets”, and no word has come as to how the lawyers will be able to make their case without being able to rely upon these materials.
From Berlisconi till now, Italy maintains it had no role in the Nasr rendition.
The case involves twenty six American agents and several Italian agents.
From We want you to know that we are gearing up for actions on many critical and substantive issues, health care, mass media issues, real food safety and more, and we will have much more on all these soon.
However, this week there is a special priority. We told you that another activist group was sending copies of the Vince Bugliosi Book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder” to each and every local county district attorney in the country, nearly 3,000 books in the mail which were due to arrive at their destinations on or about Feb. 21, so they should be there by now. Continue reading
On Wednesday, March 4, 2009, Patrick Leahy convened a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the creation of a “Truth and Consequences Commission” to hear the abuses and remedies of the George Bush and Dick Cheney administration. Joining this panel were Thomas Pickering, Ret. Vice Admiral Lee Gunn, John Farmer, F.A.O. Schwarz, David Rivkin and Jeremy Rabkin.
“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.”
During the Cheney/Bush Administration we saw many examples of judicial manipulation. From the Department of Justice attorney firings to the commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence, the Bush Administration repeatedly flaunted its power to protect its own backside. The questions of legality of torture were obfuscated by ideologues who favored any actions the CheneyBush Admin wished to enact. But the question remains, how binding are those decisions? Continue reading
There is rarely joy to be found in prosecution. This process of holding someone accountable is loaded with frustration from the get go. But without holding people accountable for their actions, we might as well scrap any pretense of justice or rule of law.
In the past 8 years we have seen violations of the fundamental standards of American values, whether they were ever real or simply imagined. In the name of national defense the administration and their enablers in the Congress eroded the fundamental constitutional standards that define this democratic experiment. The Bush Administration lobbied to go to war on a country that had never attacked the U.S., authorized torture of detainees, allowed extraordinary rendition of suspects, wasted billions of dollars to hide its crimes and mistakes, wiretapped citizens, journalists, soldiers calling their families, non-profits, politicized the Department of Justice, outed a CIA officer and her colleagues operations, threatened countries who didn’t run lock-step, and continuously lied about these actions when directly asked to own up to them. Continue reading