Human Rights Glance
Retired Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who served the Bush Administration as a senior official in the State Department with access to classified documents and the most senior White House officials, was willing to testify, and formally declared under penalty of perjury, that many of the prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay were taken into custody "without regard for whether they were truly enemy combatants, or in fact whether many of them were enemies at all."
His declaration, filed in the spring of 2010 in a D.C. federal court, asserted that "of the initial 742 detainees that had arrived at Guantánamo, the majority of them had never seen a U.S. soldier in the process of their initial detention and their captivity had not been subjected to any meaningful review."
Former State Department Official: Team Bush Knew Many at Gitmo Were Innocent
Life under lockdown at America’s hunger-striking prison camps
With nearly every one of the 166 Guantánamo prisoners now under lockdown — back in solitary existence after years of communal living — the military has reverted to a battle rhythm reminiscent of the Bush administration.
Pre-cleared captives awaiting political change are confined for long stretches to 8-by-12 cells, each man praying behind his own steel door, deciding for himself whether to eat a solitary meal.
Amnesty Int'l: Israel Must Release Palestinian Academic Detained Without Justification
Amnesty International today repeated its demand that Israel release Palestinian activist and scholar, Ahmed Qatamesh, who has been held without charge for two years – after his administrative detention was extended for the sixth time without justification.
Qatamesh, 63, who Amnesty International believes is being detained to deter political activities by other Palestinian left-wing activists, was told Thursday that he would be held for at least another four months beginning on April 29.
To whom does Wounded Knee belong?
The administration of President Benjamin Harrison praised the military tactics used by the 7th Cavalry and awarded 20 of the soldiers Medals of Honor.
The New York Times told a different story, writing contemporaneously that the Native Americans had been "robbed when at peace, starved and angered into war, and then hunted down by the government."
At Wounded Knee, as many as 300 unarmed men, women and children were killed. And official reports from some in government criticizing the massacre were simply buried.
Guantanamo hunger strike widens, concern over force-feeding
More Guantanamo prisoners have joined a hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention at the US-run military jail, with 97 out of 166 detainees refusing food, officials said Friday.
Among the strikers, 19 have been given nasal feeding tubes, and five of those are hospitalized but do not have life-threatening conditions, Guantanamo Bay spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Samuel House said in a statement.
Palestinian Christians battle Israel barrier route
Palestinians in this Christian village are hoping the new pope can succeed where others have failed — pressing Israel to drop plans to build a stretch of its West Bank separation barrier through their picturesque valley.
Since Vatican properties are affected, residents have appealed to the Roman Catholic Church to use more of its significant influence in the Holy Land to reroute the barrier, even as local Catholic leaders hold a special protest Mass in threatened orchards each week.
‘Four little girls’ of Birmingham remembered 50 years later
It’s been nearly 50 years since four young girls were killed after members of the Ku Klux Klan planted a bomb at their Sunday school in Birmingham, Ala., simply because of the color of their skin.
But five decades later, lawmakers have moved one step closer to posthumously awarding the “four little girls,” as they are known by some, with the Congressional Gold Medal, proving that their memory remains seared into our national consciousness.
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