- The network of secret prisons established by the CIA
and increasingly being run by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's parallel
paramilitary and intelligence force, were opposed by top Pentagon lawyers.
The entire gamut of Bush administration policies on prisoners runs afoul
of U.S. and international law claim the military counsels. In Eastern Europe
alone, there are 100 or more prisoners being held in dozens of facilities
the Bush administration considers being within "law free zones,"
according to officials. Defense Department attorneys also disagreed strongly
with Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief Counsel David Addington' s favorable
position on torturing prisoners. The lawyers concluded that international
law to which the United States is a party applies even in cases where the
status of prisoners is debatable. They argue that the Geneva Conventions
applies to those captured on foreign battlefields, including the Taliban,
Al Qaeda, and foreign fighters in Iraq.
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- The Pentagon lawyers also generally oppose the "ticking
bomb" scenario used to justify torture. Two high level Defense Department
lawyers said the "ticking bomb" justification is being used to
legitimize unlawful conduct and all interrogation actions. Some government
attorneys favor the appointment of a Special Prosecutor with the same powers
as Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate whether senior government officials
knowingly violated US law when they approved the rendition (kidnapping),
abuse, and torture of prisoners by US authorities or by foreign governments
where prisoners were sent by the US with the foreknowledge that they would
be tortured. In cases where torture led to death, the Special Prosecutor
would also be able to add accessory to murder to any criminal charges against
Bush administration officials.
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- The lawyers' comments came amid new reports about the
network of secret prisons in Eastern Europe. Human Rights Watch has identified
two of the secret prisons: Szymany Airport in Poland (located nearby Polish
Military Intelligence headquarters) and Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield
in Romania near the seaport of Constanta. The probable increased involvement
of the Pentagon in the secret bases is highlighted by the fact that Rumsfeld
visited Mihail Kogalniceanu base in October 2004. Rumsfeld made it a point
of playing down the importance of the base to journalists accompanying
him at the time. Before arriving in Romania, Rumsfeld visited Macedonia,
another country mentioned as a possible location of secret prisons.
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- The road to the Szymany prison camp (photo) in northeast
Poland run by the Bush neo-cons (Hitler and Himmler would be so proud that
these "ostlands" are back in business)
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- A CIA Boeing 737 touched down at both the Polish and
Romanian airports in September 2003 after logging a flight plan from Washington,
DC via Ruzyne, Czech Republic and Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to Kabul, Afghanistan
and then to Szymany, Kogalniceanu, Sale, Morocco and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The European Commission has requested reports on secret prisons from three
of the countries identified by yesterday's WMR: Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria.
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- http://waynemadsenreport.com/
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