Amnesty International Says Guantanamo Getting Worse

Spiegel Online:

Amnesty International has sharply criticized conditions at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In a report released on Thursday, the organization said around 80 percent of the 385 inmates are being held in "cruel conditions of isolation" with almost no contact with the outside world.

"While the United States has an obligation to protect its citizens" the report said, "that does not relieve the United States from the responsibilities to comply with human rights."

Earlier moves to relax the conditions and to increase opportunities for socialization among detainees seem to have been reversed, Amnesty said. The isolated prisoners are now spending 22 hours alone in a windowless cell with no natural light or fresh air. They exercise alone, often at night and can go for days without seeing daylight. Inmates have their meals alone in their cells, which are constantly lit, and they are observed 24 hours a day.

The Republican War on the Constitution continues

AP:

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that foreign-born prisoners seized as potential terrorists and held in Guantanamo Bay may not challenge their detention in U.S. courts, a key victory for President Bush's anti-terrorism plan.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that civilian courts no longer have the authority to consider whether the military is illegally holding the prisoners — a decision that will strip court access for hundreds of detainees with cases currently pending.

Both majority judges are Republican appointees...

Most criticized by Democrats and civil libertarians was a provision that stripped U.S. courts of the authority to hear arguments from detainees who said they were being held illegally. The law instead authorizes three-officer military panels to review whether there is sufficient evidence to justify the detention.

On Daily Kos, Big Tent Democrat provides legal analysis.War

Rebuilding our republic...

Spencer Ackerman, at TPM Muckraker, reports the Senators Chris Dodd and Bob Menendez will introduce a bill to radically reform Bush's demented law on foreign detainees. Among other basics, Dodd and Menendez want to restore habeas corpus and bar the use of evidence obtained through torture. Will they have the votes to pass the reform? Unclear. Will they have the votes to over-ride a certain Bush veto? Probably not. But it at least begins shifting the momentum.

The Bush bill was passed during a heated election campaign, and many Democrats supported it because they were too timid about voting down the entire bill based on those particular violations of basic human rights. They knew that to vote against the entire bill would have led to Republican and corporate media accusations that they were "soft on terror." No honor in their putting fear above principle. But they now have the opportunity to keep the legitimate parts of the law, while ridding it of its most obscene depredations. They might lose the votes, but they can at least force people to put on the record where they stand specifically on habeas corpus and torture.