Human Rights Glance
A military watchdog has adjourned public hearings into the alleged torture of Afghan prisoners for a week while lawyers battle over the scope of its investigation. The chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission, Peter Tinsley, stopped the hearings into complaints filed by two human-rights groups hours after they began Wednesday.
The probe is looking into what military police in Kandahar knew – or should have known – about the possible abuse of prisoners Canadian soldiers handed over to Afghanistan's notorious intelligence service for interrogation.
Hundreds of Negev residents, Jews and Arabs, as well as friends and supporters from all over the country, gathered Saturday afternoon in the lands of el-Malichi el-Arakib, near the Lehavim-Rahat junction in the Negev.
Since 2004, 19 people, about half of them children, have been killed in protests against the barrier. The rights groups found that in four small Palestinian villages – Bil’in, Ni’lin, Ma’sara and Jayyous – 1,566 Palestinians have been injured in demonstrations against the wall.
Israel is threatening to kill off a crucial West Bank economic project unless the Palestinian Authority withdraws a request to the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged Israeli crimes during last winter's Gaza war.
A U.S. federal judge refused Wednesday to release records describing interrogation techniques authorized for overseas use by the CIA, saying it was up to the agency to decide if they should remain secret.
For the CIA supervisors and operatives responsible for torture, the chickens are coming home to roost; that is, if President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder mean it when they say no one is above the law – and if they don’t fall victim to brazen intimidation.
The Obama administration has decided not to seek legislation to establish a new system of preventive detention to hold terrorism suspects and will instead rely on a 2001 congressional resolution authorizing military force against al-Qaeda and the Taliban to continue to detain people indefinitely and without charge, according to administration officials.
