YOUTUBE (12 mins 2 secs) - Gareth Peirce Speaks on Bradley Manning: "Dispatches from the Dark Side"

by Law Society of Ireland Gazette Thu Apr 28, 2011 06:21

Gareth is on the front page of the Law Society of Ireland's Gazette this month
Go to this link
http://www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/
...scroll down to page 20
for
Law Society of Ireland's Gazette
COVER STORY
P.20 Peircing Intelligence: Exclusive Interview with Gareth Pierce
April 2011

Gareth Peirce is one of the world’s foremost human rights lawyers, well known for her groundbreaking work on the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four cases. Colin Murphy speaks to her about her work, the ‘universal crime’ of torture, and her passion for the rule of law.

...scroll down to P.44 for
Review of Gareth Peirce's book of Essays
"Dispatches form the Darkside: On Torture and the Death of Justice

by Counterpunch Sat May 21, 2011 05:57

Challenging the Government for 30 Years
Peirce for the Defense
By COLIN MURPHY

Spending time with defence lawyer Gareth Peirce can get surreal, because of the stories she tells.

One such story tells of an attempt to deport an Egyptian dissident from the UK (1). The man was a human rights lawyer who had opposed the Mubarak regime, and been tortured. He fled to the UK and sought asylum, but was detained. He challenged his detention and Peirce took his case.

During that case, a memo from the Home Office to Tony Blair was disclosed, unusually. The memo noted that assurances given by Egypt that the man would not be tortured, if returned, were worthless. On the memo, Blair had written: "This is a bit much. Why do we need all these things?"

The Egyptian won his release, but was then made the subject of a UN assets freezing order, managed by the UK Treasury, requiring that he be given neither money nor benefit without a licence. "'Benefit' included eating the meals his wife cooked," Peirce explained. "She required a licence to cook them." His family had to account precisely for their household expenditure; because his wife's English was poor, the children had to submit monthly accounts to the Treasury.

If such pettiness seems farcical, Peirce suggested a more insidious aspect. Cables from the US embassy in Cairo, published through Wikileaks, revealed that the US had been "shipping out" intelligence from torture victims; this might have meant that Egyptian dissidents fleeing to the UK could have been tried or assessed in the UK using intelligence obtained under torture in Egypt: "A circular nightmare." The UK government decision late last year to settle cases brought by British former detainees in Guantanamo Bay, who had alleged British involvement in their torture, means that key information on whether the UK used information obtained under torture will not now be revealed. Peirce thought the decision to settle the cases indicated who should be believed. Anyway, "The battle is still going on."

http://www.counterpunch.org/murphy05202011.html

by 40 years solitary Wed Jun 08, 2011 05:03

Two US prisoners who have been held in solitary confinement for nearly 40 years should have their isolation ended immediately, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

Albert Woodfox, 64, and Herman Wallace, 69, have been held in solitary at Louisiana State Penitentiary ever since they were convicted of murdering a prison guard in 1972, the London-based human rights group said.

Their four-decade ordeal "is cruel and inhumane and a violation of the US's obligations under international law," said Guadalupe Marengo, Amnesty's Americas deputy director.

"We are not aware of any other case in the United States where individuals have been subjected to such restricted human contact for such a prolonged period of time."

ATICLECONTINUED...
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/us-inmates-40-years-solitary-m....html

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Wed Jun 08, 2011 11:06

what about Mordechai Vanunu heading for 30 years solitary, for trying to forestall the Israeli nuclear program by revealing the Dimona agenda to introduce nukes into the most volatile region on the planet?

These lads at least have the consolation that they are incarcerated for a homicidal crime.

Vanunu is locked away for trying to prevent the unleashing of mass murder and the creation of a vortex that can pull us into full scale global sterilisation, at the hands of a lunatic fundamentalist coalition of those willingly-hypnotised by the folk-tale claims of racist supremacy based on biblical authority.

Pass that hemlock goblet.

by U.S.attack lawyers Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:22

The FBI and the CIA Pressured US Lawyer to Betray his Arab and Muslim Clients

by Sherwood Ross

Federal agents from the FBI and CIA/FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force tried to get a distinguished international lawyer to inform on his Arab and Muslim clients in violation of their Constitutional rights to attorney-client privilege, this reporter has learned. When the lawyer refused, he said the FBI placed him on a "terrorist watch list."

Law professor Francis Boyle gave a chilling account of how, in the summer of 2004, two agents showed up at his office (at the University of Illinois, Champaign,) “unannounced, misrepresented who they were and what they were about to my secretary, gained access to my office, interrogated me for about one hour, and repeatedly tried to get me to become their informant on my Arab and Muslim clients."

"This would have violated their (clients) Constitutional rights and my ethical obligations as an Attorney," Boyle explained. "I refused. So they put me on all of the United States government's 'terrorist watch' lists."

Boyle said his own lawyer found "there are about five or six different terrorist watch lists, and as far as he could determine, I am on all of them." Despite a legal appeal to get his name removed, Boyle said, "I will remain on all of these terrorist watch lists for the rest of my life or until the two Agencies who put me on there remove my name, which is highly unlikely."

"Whatever people might think about lawyers, we are the canary-birds of democracy. When the government goes after your lawyer soon they will be going after you," Boyle warned. "Indeed," he added, "the government goes after your lawyer in order to get to you, which is what happened to me. This is what the so-called 'war against terrorism' is really all about. It is a war against the United States Constitution."

Boyle is a leading American professor and practitioner of international law. He holds doctorates in both law (cum laude) and Political Science from Harvard and has more than two decades of experience representing pacifist anti-war resisters, suspects in the so-called "War on Terror" and foreign governments such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is the author of numerous books, including "Protesting Power," (Rowman & Littlefield), "Biowarfare and Terrorism,"(Clarity) and "Destroying World Order"(Clarity). ARTICLE CONTINUED......

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25840